SERMONS 
FOR THE PEOPLE. 



BY 



F. D. HUNTINGTON, D.D., 

PREACHER TO THE UNIVERSITY, AND PLUMMER PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN 
MORALS IN THE COLLEGE, AT CAMBRIDGE. 



FOURTH EDITION. 



BOSTON: 

CROSBY, NICHOLS, AND COMPANY. 
CINCINNATI: 
GEORGE S. BLANCHARD. 
1 8 5 7. 



1 m 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by 
CROSBY, NICHOLS, & CO., 
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



©ftt 

Bertram Smith 
Mefch IS, 1934- 



CAMBRIDGE : 
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY METCALF AND COMPANY. 



If 1 were to say, in the familiar phrase, that these Sermons were 
" prepared in the ordinary course of the ministry," and for the most 
part at an earlier period of it, and " with no view to their publication," 
I should thus show no cause why they should now be deliberately 
printed. If I were to record my sense of their manifold and large 
defects, I should but appear to be pronouncing myself, in advance, as 
wise as the critics. Let me only remark, therefore, that they have 
been both written and printed, because I thoroughly believe the things 
affirmed in them to be true, and have hoped that other persons might 
be willing to meditate upon them with me. 

The title given to the book will probably suggest all that needs to be 
said of the principle that has governed the selection of subjects and the 
style of their treatment. One topic, the Reconciliation in Christ, 
though by no means neglected here, has a less extended and less com- 
plete presentation, because of a desire to discuss it separately, more 
at large, and more at leisure, than is possible now. Without bringing 
forward any personal claim to the attention of considerable numbers 
of " the people," I am earnestly desirous to render a little service to 
some of those who are not much in the habit of reading discourses 
prepared for the pulpit. Were I to give to this title a more special 
and local application, by emphasizing the definite article, I should not 
exaggerate my feeling of unmingled and unmeasured gratitude and 
love towards my former congregation, — a People that must always be 
to me, in a signification that stands alone, The People, — a People 
that I tried for thirteen years to help, whose harmony, energy, and 
fidelity made my work delightful, and whose constant kindness I cannot 
repay, save by these unworthy acknowledgments, and by an attach- 
ment that will never be changed. 

F. D. H. 

Cambridge, May 1, 1856. 



CONTENTS. 



SERMON I. 

PAGE 



OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH A REALITY 1 

SERMON II. 
REALITY IN RELIGIOUS MANIFESTATIONS 16 

SERMON III. 

ASKING AND RECEIVING 31 

SERMON IV. 

THE SOUL'S SEARCH . .45 

SERMON V. 

THE soul's coronation 57 

SERMON VI. 

HOMEWARD STEPS 71 

SERMON VII. 

HOLINESS TO THE LORD 88 

SERMON VIII. 

SATAN TRANSFORMED 103 



VI CONTENTS. 



SEEMON IX. 

FOUR APOSTLES 117 

SEEMON X. 

ACCEPTANCE OF THE HEART 134 

SEEMON XI. 
woman's POSITION 149 

SEEMON XII. 

THE CHRISTIAN WOMAN 164 

SEEMON XIII. 

THE LAW OF THE HOUSE 178 

SEEMON XIV. 

CHILDREN, — HOW TO BE RECEIVED 193 

SEEMON XV. 

ENTRANCE INTO THE CHURCH 208 

SEEMON XVI. 

TRIALS OF FAITH 224 

SEEMON XVII. 

SALVATION, NOT FROM SUFFERING, BUT BY IT . . . . 238 

SEEMON XVIII. 

DIVINITY OF CHRIST . 252 

SEEMON XIX. 

DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT 271 

SEEMON XX. 

THE SOUL'S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST, AND VICTORY BY HIM . 289 



CONTENTS. Vii 
SERMON XXI. 

THE HIDDEN LIFE 310 

SERMON XXII. 

SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP 330 

SERMON XXIII. 

THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL 362 

SERMON XXIV. 

FOUNDATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN CITY 400 

SERMON XXV. 

NATIONAL RETRIBUTION, AND THE NATIONAL SIN . . . .418 

SERMON XXVI. 



THE WORD OF LIFE : A LIVING MINISTRY AND A LIVING CHURCH 433 



SERMONS. 



SERMON 



I. 



OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH A REALITY. 

VERILY, VERILY, I SAY UNTO THEE, WE SPEAK THAT WE DO 
KNOW, AND TESTIFY THAT WE HAVE SEEN. — John iii. 11. 

It seems, at first, but a very moderate claim to set up 
for the alleged truths of our religion, to ask that they be 
respected as realities. But a second thought will notice 
that this demand covers the whole ground. Admit that 
these grand affirmations are authentic, — that God is a 
real Father and really a Sovereign, while each personal 
soul — yours and mine — is his child and his subject; 
admit that spiritual separation from him is the most ter- 
rible of disasters, and is to be healed at any cost ; admit 
that Jesus is really the Christ, who achieves that reconcil- 
iation, coming forth out of God, and taking up the whole 
experience of man ; admit that for a Divine law broken, 
which was the real emergency, Divine Love condescend- 
ing, with a Gospel for its voice and a sacrifice for its 
pledge, is the real relief ; admit, once more, that a right- 
eous life is really the fulfilment of human destiny, and 
that such a life reaching on and expanded into the life 
eternal is the real and personal immortality, — and you 
have granted the whole conclusion. For the very terms 
of the statement imply something beyond intellectual as- 
1 



2 



OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH A REALITY. 



sent. Something beyond is certainly wanted. Such is 
the frailty of the connection between an abstract convic- 
tion and a vital practice, between a concession of the 
understanding and a grasp of the affections, that history 
affords scarcely a more common spectacle than an inef- 
fectual creed. But the term I take to characterize the 
subject implies another element. When we say that we 
have come to realize a doctrine, we mean that, some- 
how, that doctrine has been wrought into the roots of our 
life. It has passed from a proposition accepted into an 
influence that actuates. Instead of lying stored away 
among undenied but unprized facts, never brought out 
for use, it enters in among cordial and controlling inter- 
ests, goes into the pulses of the blood, and the changes 
of pain and joy. This realizing' of Christ's truth takes 
place only when the truth in question emerges from the 
nebulous haze of conjecture into clear, sharp light, — takes 
hold of feeling, and is taken hold of by faith, — is trans- 
figured from a dull guess into a radiant assurance ; when 
religion rises among the solid verities of existence, a 
thing not to be put by, nor gone around, nor reasoned 
away, nor even let alone, but to besiege the heart with 
that solemn and immediate Presence whose word is, 
" Behold I stand at the door and knock," — to appear 
face to face before the whole roused and wakeful vision 
of our inward nature, and insist on being owned and 
obeyed. 

Precisely this is what appears to be most needed now, 
and among us, for the true efficiency of religion. Spec- 
ulative unbelief is not very formidable. The technical 
objections long ago lost the flavor of originality, and were 
always rather the afterthought and apology of a scepti- 
cal state, than the logical producers of it. The quarrel 



OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH A REALITY. 



3 



of Reason with Revelation, under the umpireship of just 
interpretation, is almost spent. The doubt that is con- 
stitutional has little to say ; the doubt that is earnest 
commonly labors and groans its painful way to the 
light ; and the doubt that is the offspring of a crude and 
conceited intellectual ambition is calmly rebuked by riper 
studies, outgrown with a loftier dignity of thought, and 
put off with childish things. But is that enough ? Have 
we reached, or are we nearing, the victory of faith then ? 
Is not passive insensibility often as tough an obstruc- 
tion as positive denial, and unconcern as hopeless mor- 
ally as opposition ? We can hardly afford to boast that 
sophistry has not deluded us, if indifference has stupefied 
us. How long will it take for Christianity to rise to 
the throne of the world, and command its practical ener- 
gies, where it meets only with the lifeless allowance, 
that the objections have been duly considered, and found, 
on the whole, not to be valid ? For our religion is nei- 
ther a dogma nor a theory, a thesis nor an hypothesis, a 
category nor a dream. It is a spiritual power. It is a 
personal presence. It is a governing genius of life. It 
is a comforter of actual sorrows. It is a quickener to 
every noble work. It is the world's best builder and 
planter and legislator and reformer. It is not a stranger 
to be scrutinized, but a friend to be loved, because it 
has first loved us. It is not a guest to be entertained, 
but a leader to be followed ; not a secret to be found 
out, for its very face is a revelation ; not a clever and 
promising applicant for a place, which thrift may turn to 
account or vanity display, for it speaks in the name of 
the Lord ; not an institution that can expire by limita- 
tion, nor a form that grows old, nor a ceremony that can 
give up the ghost and still keep on its feet, but an ever- 



4 



OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH A REALITY. 



lasting and ever-living law, " vital in every part " ; not a 
policy that can be shaped, but a principle that, by its own 
formative and irresistible spirit, shapeth all things. It is 
a reality ; and, if a reality at all, then a reality that can 
say, " Thou shalt, and thou shalt not" ; a Come unto me 
and I will give you rest " ; " Whosoever belie veth in me 
passes from death unto life"; "We speak that we do 
know, and we testify that we have seen." 

I invite you to notice, then, some of the few central 
facts in the Christian faith, that authenticate its claim as 
a religion of realities. Start with the idea of God ; — 
the idea of him, I say, which is a fact of our own human- 
ity. Start, that is, on the ground of personal experi- 
ence ; for, if anything is real, it must be the home-scen- 
ery of your own breast. The common arguments, from 
the necessary notion of the Infinite, from the universality 
of worship in all tribes and times of the globe, I pass by. 
Christianity does not create the idea of God, but finds it 
extant. In taking the being of God for granted, it sim- 
ply places itself on the basis of natural reality, — a reality 
affirmed by the consenting feelings and philosophies of 
the nations, — East and West, North and South, agreeing 
to pronounce atheism a monstrosity. But what concerns 
us here is, how Christianity deals with this sacred in- 
stinct, and proceeds to nourish and satisfy it. I say, it 
is after the manner of reality, unfolding real relations 
between this Infinite One and us, filling real wants by 
its revelations. " Whom, therefore, ye ignorant] y wor- 
ship, him declare I unto you," said not only Paul to the 
Athenians, but Messiah to the world. It is a real au- 
thority that speaks. This Jesus, who says to the repre- 
sentative Pharisee of the old Judaism that comes creeping 
and hungry to him by night, " We speak that we do 



OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH A REALITY. 



5 



know, and we testify that we have seen," is the ever- 
iiving Immanuel that left the glory he had with the 
Father before the world was to manifest that Father, 
one with the Ancient of Days, the same yesterday, to-day, 
and for ever. When he opens his lips, the style is real, 
because the spirit is sincere. The message is cordial, 
because the motive is love. There is reality in the very 
attitudes and occasions : for he sits down weary by a 
Samaritan well, in a summer noon, and talks of the wor- 
ships of ages with the woman that comes to draw water ; 
he points, as he walks on, to the sparrows that the Heav- 
enly Father feeds ; he stoops and plucks a lily, and 
shows it clothed of God in a glory passing the imperial 
splendors of Solomon. 

Then there is reality in the substance of his doctrine. 
" God is a spirit": with that simple announcement van- 
ish old idolatries that materialized the gods, and mythol- 
ogies that multiplied them, emptying the Pantheon as no 
Constans or Urban could, and prostrating the altars of 
pagan profanation. " The Lord of the servants cometh 
and reckoneth with them ; small and great shall stand 
before him ; there is a right hand and a left ; he divideth 
the sheep from the goats ; whatsoever a man soweth, he 
shall reap " : how real this makes his judgment, and how 
genuine his justice ! But what is perhaps more special 
in the Christian teaching about God than anything be 
side, is its tender disclosures of his nearness, and hi?, 
condescension to our lowliness. He is no God of dis- 
tant skies, of enthroned pomp, of royal reserve, but 
to believing hearts close as the air and intimate as 
the light of day. Nothing so small but it partakes of 
his majesty ; nothing so obscure but it publishes his pa- 
ternity. 

l* 



6 



OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH A REALITY. 



" Teach us that not a leaf can grow, 
Till life from thee within it flow ; 
That not a grain of dust can be, 
0 Eount of Being, save by thee ! " 

This morning's waking was the touch of his hand. Last 
week's plan of life or study was looked down upon with 
his sympathizing notice. This worship is engaging his 
compassion. "When you left your home the other day, 
your heart devised your way, but the Lord did really 
direct your steps. When you prayed that God would 
keep those you left there, your prayer was verily heard, 
and, whether by granting or denying, it will be God him- 
self that answers you, — the personal, listening, loving 
God. No God that is hid away in heartless laws, or 
prisoned in Pantheistic ice, but the friendly God of each 
separate soul now, as of the elders and prophets, — of 
John and James, of Peter and Simeon, of Mary Mag- 
dalen and Jairus's daughter. Judsea did not exhaust his 
love. He is the God of these houses, and streets, and 
schools, as well ; of our parents' solicitude, of our chil- 
dren's happiness, of our own frail feet. The Christian's 
God is a reality. No reality on earth so real ! 

Out of this opens the true doctrine of human inter- 
course with this God, or Prayer. It sweeps away the 
artificial notions and mechanical customs that have 
grown up around this most natural of the soul's acts, 
and restores it to its just simplicity. "What is natural, if 
not that a child should speak to his parent, dependent 
weakness to sustaining power, the needy subject to the 
gracious king, — speak his wants, his gratitude, his trust, 
his hope, — speak in the common language that earnest 
feeling always chooses and always finds ; should ask for 
what none else than this God can give, tell him the truth 



OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH A REALITY. 



7 



because there is a privilege in telling it ? And this is 
prayer. It is a reality, then. It is something yearned 
for, and something satisfying. So speaks the world's 
best experience, ever since man has breathed upon it, 
and looked up from it to the pitying heavens. And this 
is what Christ and the New Testament teach about 
prayer : make it real ; keep it fresh, simple, true, and 
then it will be fervent and constant. Fall under no tor- 
pid routine in it. The only safeguard for reverence in 
the service is to realize what it is. There is one error of 
worshipping God as if he needed anything we can bring ; 
and another more common error of pretending to wor- 
ship him without really believing he will grant us what 
we ask. To pretend to supplicate things we do not 
really desire, but only things that we suspect we ought 
to desire, — or things that we have heard others ask for, 
and therefore coldly conclude it is proper we should ask 
for, — is not prayer. It may be speculation. It may be 
imitation. It may be self-excitation. But it is not 
prayer. It is hearsay. It is traditional mummery. It 
is a hollow and ghastly affectation, which murders faith 
within, and degrades it abroad. Christ brings back the 
doctrine of prayer to reality : " Ask, and ye shall re- 
ceive." It is all in these five words. And five homely 
words out of the heart are better than prolonged and 
polished ascriptions on a thoughtless tongue. Prayer 
for the least things, the commonest things, the really 
wished-for things, intercessions for others beloved, as lit- 
tle children ask what they know they shall receive, or 
what they know a Love wiser than their own will deny ! 
This was the temper of those brave devotions that wjent 
up through the morning air of the Church, and have been 
renewed ever since where trial has kept faith clear, or the 



s 



OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH A REALITY. 



searching Spirit has touched the soul ; such prayer as he- 
roic and lofty-minded men have found to be the best of 
joys, — = no weakness of sentiment, no refuge of fear, no 
hypocrite's trick, but precisely the manliest, the most ra- 
tional, the maturest, the sublimest act of man. 

Co-ordinate with this open-hearted and loyal commun- 
ion with Heaven is the love of man, another of the Chris- 
tian realities. Here again Christianity does not create 
the sensibility, or the faculty, but out of it weaves the 
bond of spiritual brotherhood. In the handling and train- 
ing of that social instinct, what would be the brightest 
tokens of reality that any teaching could give ? Un- 
doubtedly, that it should stimulate fellowship by the 
healthiest motive, regulate it by the wisest law, and di- 
rect it to the purest object. Those conditions are satis- 
fied in the New Testament. It inspires, it organizes, it 
consecrates charity. Its motive is disinterested mercy, 
of which its central and crucified Form is lifted up, the in- 
carnate example. Its law is a broad and far-seeing equity, 
saving it from wronging one class by righting another, 
from destroying without constructing. Its object is the 
personal relief, the universal liberation, and the spiritual 
rectitude of every soul, and thus the preparation of a 
righteous society, or church, which is the coming of the 
heavenly kingdom on earth. In all this process, in every 
step, reform, advance, does not the action come straight 
home to us as the very necessity of history, prophecy, as- 
piration ? Yet this, and only this, is the philanthropy of 
Christ. All wanting from this is short-coming from the 
Gospel standard. All added to this comes of mortal 
mixtures. To publish calls to honorable labor in the 
kennels of starvation ; to equalize work and wages for 
the least protected workman and workwoman ; to open 



OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH A REALITY. 



9 



roads to self-respect from every home in the land ; to en 
courage defeated and despairing energies ; to bring celes- 
tial pity and gentle words into those dismal dens where 
a false civilization has too long caged its insane or out- 
cast children ; to break the bonds of old oppression and 
let the oppressed go free ; to measure labor, not by the 
traditions of prejudice and pride, or the outside form of 
the business, but by the spirit of the workman, and so to 
make all lawful toil of impartial estimation ; to ward off 
cold and hunger from penniless infancy and age ; — all 
this is of the very substance — is it not the glorious re- 
ality ? — of our Christian faith, in its action on the mu- 
tual life of men. 

Turning from the social to the private offices of Chris- 
tianity, we find the self-witnessing proofs of genuineness 
equally bright. For here we encounter the only satisfac- 
tory interpretation of what may be called the natural ad- 
miration and yearning towards an ideal moral perfection. 
It is only in very inferior natures that this sensibility to 
exalted goodness is utterly depraved, and its frequent 
dulness on the one hand is hardly a more palpable stu- 
pidity than the denial of its existence on the other. 
Baseness itself secretly confesses the beauty of magna- 
nimity. A guilty life rarely wipes out the last trace of 
childish loyalty to the right and good and true. The 
story of triumphant fidelity, of an incorruptible conscience, 
of purity coming out white from her walk through foul 
intriguings as if " a thousand liveried angels lackeyed 
her," — this is the perpetual charm of literature, the un- 
dertone of drama and epic, and the unconscious challenge 
of every people under the sun ; — while with all select 
souls, the tantalizing disparity between the aspiring aim 
and the lagging performance, is the tragic element that, 



10 OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH A REALITY. 

except for the Gospel, so often throws over our life the 
sickening suspicion of total failure after all. So real is 
the passion for the Best. How does the Gospel justify 
it ? First, by pronouncing its hearty benediction on these 
native aspirations, as the very divine seal set on human- 
ity, — its pledge of kinship with heaven, the silent proph- 
ecy and infallible foreshining, however baffled for the 
present, of a life to come,- — a "light lighting every man 
that cometh into the world." By encouraging them : 
" Why, even of yourselves, judge ye not what is right ? " 
By furnishing them nutriment and a discipline, to ripen 
their vigor, and make them strong leaders towards a good- 
ness unattained : " forgetting the things that are behind, 
reaching forth unto those that are before." By holding 
ever up, before us, one in whom all their promises are 
realized, — realized, — a veritable instance of immaculate 
sanctity and symmetrical virtue, taking our infirmities, 
yet " the master-light of all our seeing," " tempted in all 
points like as we are, yet without sin." And finally by 
giving them an hereafter where they shall mature into 
open vision and into calm and balanced power, — thought 
running unrestricted into deed, — aspiration playing, 
through some finer spiritual organization, into direct 
achievement, — and believers who now see through a 
glass darkly, and know but in part, shall see face to face, 
and know even as they are known ; — the sad reality of 
our nature met, fulfilled, satisfied, in the animating real- 
ity of faith, by him who is the Resurrection and the Life ! 

Not less does the New Testament fit the varieties of 
human consciousness and experience in its great doctrine 
of a ruling choice determining character. It does divide 
the world into two sorts of persons, by the inexorable line 
of that voluntary consecration. Every life has a prepon- 



OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH A REALITY. 



11 



derating bias, — a characteristic motive. If our weak 
insight fails to read these hidden qualities accurately in 
others, it is only because our function is not that of crit- 
ics on one another, but of stewards answerable for our- 
selves. Of course Christianity does not stultify itself by 
denying the mixtures of disposition, or disallowing the 
gradations of virtue and vice. But it fixes a limit where 
those mixtures no longer confuse. There is one differen- 
cing point — and it is the point of motive — where the 
world's people and God's people divide. There is a 
mark where living for self-gratification, whether sensual 
or intellectual, ends, and living for Christ and his right- 
eousness takes its place ; where self-will ceases to be the 
controlling force, and religious submission or consecrated 
principle begins to be. There may not be, there will 
not be, spotless holiness on one side, nor unmitigated 
and demoniacal depravity on the other. But there is a 
divergence as wide apart in its issues as heaven and hell. 
On one side, notions, feelings, acts, which might other- 
wise seem to be neutral, take a taint of evil from an un- 
godly bias of the life. On the other side, actions and 
feelings which might otherwise be indifferent are stamped 
as good, because the ruling affection, the radical inten- 
tion of life is right, or Christian. So neutrality ends, 
and every least thing has one of two contradictory, char- 
acteristic qualities. And so regeneration is both a philo- 
sophical and a Christian fact. "Ye cannot serve God 
and mammon." If the Lord be God, follow him ; and 
if Baal, then follow him. Except ye be born again, out 
of the negative natural life into the positive and spirit- 
itual, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of Heaven. 
Christianity confirms common sense. Just as the world 
says of you, " He is a sound, true man, through and 



12 



OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH A REALITY. 



through," — or, " He is a false, hollow man at the core," 
— the Bible replies with a scene of judgment where there 
is a right hand and a left, and by saying, " I know mine 
own ; no man can pluck them out of my hand " ; "Be- 
tween Dives the glutton, and Abraham's bosom, there is 
a great gulf fixed " ; and " Choose ye this day whom ye 
will serve." 

But there is one reality in human nature darker and 
more fearful. That law and guide of life I spoke of, so 
real in its uncompromising command, — so benignant in 
its protection of our waywardness, has been broken, — is 
broken every day. Those soaring aspirations that beck- 
oned us to Heaven are shamefully trailed in the dust. 
Or even if the choice has been fixed aright, still the law 
is holy, just, and good, for it is the will of that Infinite 
Purity before which angels veil their faces, while the 
saintliest life ever transfigured by trial or refined by the 
fire of martyrdom is not clean. Yet there is no conces- 
sion in that august command. "Thou shalt, and thou 
shalt not," sounds on from age to age, as if obedience were 
expected to be. Without speculating on a problem so 
vast, the question gathers close home to the breast, and 
grows intensely personal, Where am I, and what is for 
me? I am daily disgraced by these earthly appetites 
and small desires, these petty captivities to temper and 
vile surrenders to sense. I am weak, and worse than 
weak. I am frail and offending and guilty. The 
meanness of ingratitude to my best Benefactor aggra- 
vates the iniquity of transgression. By speech, by 
thoughts, by imagination, by things undone that I ought 
to have done, by openings of blessed opportunity neg- 
lected, by stationary capacities and languid zeal and cold 
affections, I am condemned and lost. I look up at the 



OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH A REALITY. 



13 



splendor above the stars, the holiness of God, and it is 
both too dazzling and too far. Who shall deliver me 
from this death ? 

Christ shall deliver thee. He has come for that, — to 
seek and save the lost, because his Father so loved the 
world. And somehow, in ways that I will not be pre- 
sumptuous enough to try to shut up into my definitions 
nor measure by my dogmas, — by his life, teachings, 
death, resurrection, intercession, all contributing ineffably 
to complete a redemption that no creed can comprehend, 
nor critic analyze, — he brings the wandering will back, 
the prodigal spirit home. The stern handwriting of 
ordinances is blotted out. Whoso believeth in him 
cannot perish, but is passed from death unto life, — eter- 
nal life. This is all. Ingenuity can add no supplement 
to that. Theologians can make it no plainer. Sects 
may fasten on this or that special feature of the redemp- 
tion, and shape their systems accordingly ; but it is the 
ivhole that redeems. The heart of the world has ac- 
cepted the reconciling mystery, and will not let the di- 
vine reality go. " This only I know," said the believing, 
wondering, trembling blind man when his eyes were 
opened, — " this only, whereas I was blind, now I see." 
This only I need to know; the faith that saves is the 
faith that inspires, — the faith of practice, working by 
love, proved by charity, triumphing in integrity, constant 
unto death, making the Christian ever more and more 
like the Master, more true to man, humbler before God. 
For if any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none 
of his. We have reached the supreme reality, character- 
izing the Gospel, crowning the cross, satisfying the soul. 

From these slight and obvious suggestions, putting for- 
ward only what is plainest and most familiar, infer, my 
2 



14 



OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH A REALITY. 



friends, what you see I have been attempting to open, of 
the reality of our Christian religion. In its ministry to 
the deep cravings of simple, honest hearts ; in its mar- 
vellous adaptation to the pain and gladness, to the fear 
and hope, to the frost and the fire, of our inexplicable hu- 
manity ; in its unpretending address to our common hab- 
its, speaking the language of life and wearing the look 
of nature ; in its boundless relief for a boundless diffi- 
culty ; in its expanding and exhaustless fulness for all 
glowing souls, — it is the reality of realities. I had almost 
said, it is the one only reality of which all visible being is 
but the unsubstantial shadow. It is the closest, dearest, 
most undeniable, most human, and divinest fact given 
us to feel. Religion is all of this, or it is nothing. Its 
claim is valid altogether, genuine from core to surface, 
or else it is counterfeit, metal and mould alike. The 
pulpit is grounded on this foundation, or it is grounded 
nowhere. It stands, not to repeat dead ceremonies, nor 
to mutter magical incantations, nor to echo heartless tra- 
ditions, but to reproclaim and reaffirm verities that enter 
in among throbbing hearts, yearning souls, and beat with 
all the solemn and joyful pulses of life. It is the dispen- 
sation of God, the highest law of man, the determiner of 
destiny, the master-thing in thought, and study, and ac- 
tion, — a reality for the lowly and the exalted, for illiterate 
and learned, for the slave and the sage, hidden how often 
from the wise and prudent, but revealed evermore unto 
the childlike heart. I ask you to honor the ministry of 
Christ for Christ's sake, and to heed it for your own, — 
to honor the office as a reality, spite of the ever-present 
and ever-palpable proofs of the infirmities of the ad- 
ministration, — to heed the cause, notwithstanding the 
poverty of the plea. For here it shall not be otherwise 



OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH A REALITY. 



15 



than it has been from the beginning, — that the weak- 
ness of God is mightier than man, and the foolishness of 
God is wiser than man. 

Brethren, in the first conflict between the Gentile dark- 
ness and the Christian light, Paganism condescended to 
offer Christianity a respectable place in the temple of its 
idols. The poor Galileans knew their poverty; but, 
shelterless and few and friendless as they were, they 
were too rich for that proud patronage. They turned 
away. They took up staff and scrip ; they tied on their 
sandals, and journeyed forth. Christ went with them. 
Out of weakness they were made strong. They went up 
to Rome, the world's centre and strong-hold, as prisoners, 
and took it as conquerors. They quenched the violence 
of fire, stopped the mouths of lions, waxed valiant in 
fight, put to flight the armies of the aliens. They led 
captivity captive. They looked on the Pretorian eagles 
and were not afraid, — for the Spirit had descended like 
a dove. They did not tremble at crosses, for they bore 
a cross for then standard, and its banner over them 
was love. They turned from prudent philosophies to 
the eager heart of man. They preached, they lived, 
they died, they rose again, for a reality. They spake 
that they did know; they testified that they had seen. 
And unto the end, when all things shall be surrendered 
up to the Father, the ministry that avails must be the 
ministry of their Christ, and of their sincerity, — of their 
reality of faith, as the substance of things hoped for, the 
evidence of things not seen. 



SERMON II. 



KEALITY IN EELIGIOUS MANIFESTATIONS. 

SIMPLICITY AND GODLY SINCERITY. — 2 Cor. i. 12. 



I take these words out from their connection, and pre- 
sent them alone, because the rest of the passage is less 
suited to my purpose. It is enough to notice that the 
Apostle mentions these qualities as attributes of the gen- 
uine Christian. He thinks the whole Gospel he is set to 
preach and defend is more likely to get a hearing from 
the world's common sense, and to lodge itself in the 
world's convictions, for being presented in the spirit and 
manner of those traits. Whatever may be his own in- 
firmities and short-comings, he rejoices in the conscious- 
ness that he has been honest. Gifts and accomplish- 
ments aside, he can say without immodesty that he and 
his associates have at least this legitimate claim to confi- 
dence, — the testimony of a good conscience that in sim- 
plicity and godly sincerity they have had their conversa- 
tion in the world. Had it been otherwise, the planting 
of the Church might have taken damage from their ob- 
liquity, and the tardy triumph of the Christian ideas 
might be chargeable upon the messengers. Such con- 
gratulation is not pride, but Christian dignity; not self-,, 
laudation, but self-respect, which is the opposite of self- 



REALITY IN RELIGIOUS MANIFESTATIONS. 



17 



laudation ; not boasting, but gratitude to the grace of 
God. 

You will readily recall those aspects of the Christian 
faith which offer it to us as the Supreme Reality. Real 
in the positive and eternal objects it reveals ; real in de- 
termining our relations to that Original and Infinite Spirit, 
diffused through all things, creating all, sustaining all, 
the ground of all life, and thought, and act, and hope ; 
real in the style of its address, the tone of its appeal, and 
its whole bearing toward our humanity; real in its ex- 
press adaptations of supply and satisfaction to personal 
and universal wants of human nature ; and real in the 
palpable ends it proposes, as righteousness, charity, benef- 
icence, for earth and heaven, — Christianity cannot be 
more viciously misunderstood or foolishly maltreated, 
than when it is thrust out of the circle of solid interests, 
and held at the arm's length of suspicion. The Church 
is a vital, natural, rational, precisely because it is a divine 
organization. It has its roots in God's miracles precisely 
because of the depth and intensity of man's need of it. 
Its fibres are all intertwined with the fibres of human 
breasts. The cover is not going to be taken off, some 
time, to show us an ingenious contrivance of mechanical 
wires, springs, and pulleys, for working up stupendous 
stage-effects of Christian impression and Christian his- 
tory. The tapestry is not going to open, and terrify us 
with some ghostly apparition. The sun is not going to 
rise and scatter these sacramental hosts, like airy armies 
of morning mist and cloud. We stand on substance, or 
there is no substance, and the universe itself is spectral. 

To this way of welcoming the divine message, there 
are unquestionably hinderances, partly clinging to the 
weaker or worse side of human nature, and partly a facti- 
2* 



18 



REALITY IN RELIGIOUS MANIFESTATIONS. 



tious result of theologic mismanagement. One of these 
hinderances is the invisibleness of the objects of faith, 
though I suppose the prominence of this cause for relig- 
ious indifference has been popularly overrated. It would 
be a sufficient answer to it, that the things most valued, 
and clung to, and suffered for by men, are not commonly 
things that can be seen or measured. The sacred ties of 
friendship are not fastened by the senses. Would you 
allow me to say, Your friend is nothing but his body ? 
You never saw the national fame for whose unsullied 
purity you would die, nor touched nor tasted that fidelity 
of love whose defence writes half the tragedies of litera- 
ture. Money itself, the very symbol of material value, is 
rated — by any but the most sottish cupidity — less for 
itself than for the imponderable deference, admiration, 
self-complacency, independence, which it is thought able 
to buy. In fact, so far from the invisible repelling in- 
terest, there is no charm so bewitching as a new theory 
of its mysteries. The superstition that will pry behind 
its veil, or listen for its vaguest noises, is one of the most 
permanent and most absorbing passions of the race. 
Still, with a portion of mankind, and, in certain material- 
istic moods, with very many, a degree of dimness does 
probably invest spiritual things from their being unem- 
bodied ; what is seen crowds what is not seen out of 
thought, and finally out of faith ; heaven remains an ab- 
straction simply because its gates are shut to the senses. 

Another unrealizing influence strikes religion, from the 
oppressive disparity between the magnitude of the con- 
cerns and the infirmity of the treatment. Reverence 
fades out, wonder is tamed down, faith is frittered away, 
with the familiar belittlement of themes vast as infinity, 
by unworthy hands. The Gospel has to be repeated by 



REALITY IN RELIGIOUS MANIFESTATIONS. 



19 



stammering tongues. Promises that of themselves should 
thrill all souls with ecstasies of hope, are pronounced in 
our flat, insipid speech. Warnings more tender and aw- 
ful than a mother's entreaty are uttered in tones that 
routine and repetition have rendered thin and dry. The 
wisdom of the All-wise has for its advocates frail judg- 
ments, dull insight, and men of like passions with the 
rest. Shall it never be learned that treasure is none the 
less treasure because it is in earthen vessels ? In other 
matters, the enthusiasm of a close, personal interest is 
not deadened by a dull declamation. A science is hard- 
ly held responsible for the eloquence of a lecturer, nor 
does a tempting speculation go by default if the story of 
it happens to be brought across the continent by a poor 
specimen of a man. To make Christianity depend on 
the power of its preachers, or the skill of theologians, is 
at once to measure absolute beauty, truth, and good by 
mortal competency, and to stimulate the pulpit with a 
spur as foreign from Gospel simplicity as it is insulting 
to the authority of God. The function of a clergy is not 
the audacious one of representing the Majesty of Heaven, 
but to plead generously with the reluctance of men ; 
not to dole out God's compassion by the petty dimen- 
sions of their intelligence, but to be unpretending heralds 
of a Christ who makes their weakness his strength, and 
even the foolishness of preaching the wisdom of God 
unto salvation. 

It aggravates this unreality, that there is so imperfect 
an adjustment, in the Christian mind, of the relations 
between the spiritual world and our present life. By a 
twofold error, the object of religion has first been repre- 
sented as personal happiness, and then that happiness 
has been located in an arbitrary future, not beginning till 



20 



REALITY IN RELIGIOUS MANIFESTATIONS. 



death rids us of bodies. A selfish salvation, with me- 
chanical conditions ! In this sharp-cut division of earth 
and heaven an artificial antagonism is created, not be- 
tween good and evil, or sin and holiness, which are the 
ictual opposites, but between two epochs in a chronologi- 
cal succession, the grave being the partition line. Heav- 
en is wages to be waited for, instead of a nobler play of 
*he disinterested life already begun. Two worlds from 
the same perfect Hand are put into contrary sides of the 
scale, and hatred of one of them is made a passport to 
the other. At once unspiritualizing the motives to piety, 
and indiscriminately condemning the present, the doc- 
trine repels all natural confidence. Shallow minds recoil 
from a representation which they instinctively feel to be 
false, and seek a wretched refuge in unconcern. Add to 
this, sometimes, a technical phraseology, putting the 
moving and blessed facts of righteousness and redemp- 
tion into language which either to educated tastes or to 
iinsophisticated common sense sounds like both a provin- 
cialism in letters and an affectation of theology, and you 
have another explanation why these transcendent realities 
look unreal to so many eyes. This may be no excuse 
for blunders that study would correct ; but it is an in- 
structive admonition to direct, simple, e very-day speech 
in dealing with things so supremely real. 

After all, however, there does remain a vast, conscious 
indifference to Christian truth, from sheer and guilty im- 
patience of its control. These realities are purposely 
thrown into obscurity, because they interfere with in- 
dulgence, cross ambition, yoke the passions, chastise 
temper. They not only ask that we should allow the 
spiritual world an inert place in our belief, as we might 
a new planet or botanic species, but they enter as a 



REALITY IN RELIGIOUS MANIFESTATIONS. 21 

prohibition and a compulsion. There must be irksome 
self-denial. This Gospel is something more than an 
entertaining comer at the table of literary hospitality ; 
it erects itself into a master of the house ; and lo ! every 
appetite and lust must obey it on penalty of a judgment. 
The mouth of slander must be stopped. The jealous 
competition must relax. The profanity must be re- 
nounced. The stubborn, atheistic knees must bend. 
The arrogant will must cry out of the dust, " Not as 1 
will, but as Thou wilt, for Thou alone art holy." So 
the struggle begins. Depravity fights this benignant 
master. Rebel passions reject that heavenly coercion 
Still, the Eternal Voice cannot be put by. What, then 
if the coward spirit should feign ignorance, and, by keep 
ing the ineffable glory at a distance, gradually make it as 
unreal as sin could desire ? Let these bright rebukers 
fade from me, and be dim ! Is there no magic that can 
turn substance into shadow ? no chemistry that can 
transmute facts to phantasms ? It appears again, what 
I said before, that to realize the Christian facts would be 
to take up the Christian consecration, and enter on the 
life. Christianity wants nothing so much as a steady 
look at it, out of honest, seeing eyes. 

The question next before us, then, concerns the man- 
ner of operation and manifestation of this Christian 
power, in the lives of its believers, and the conversation 
of its teachers. The law here appears to be clearly 
enough pronounced, by the nature of the power itself. 
A spiritual principle and fact, the very essence and in- 
most soul of real life, Christianity must be offended and 
weakened by any other than a look and tone and tern 
per of reality in its expression. After its first supernat 
ural incarnation, its agents are men. The organs of its 



22 



REALITY IN RELIGIOUS MANIFESTATIONS. 



movement are human faculties. Then its action ought 
to be according to the natural working of human powers 
in their right or normal play. The Christianity that is 
meant to be developed on earth, beautifying its life and 
blessing its affections, is not an abstract thing, nor an 
angelic thing, but a human thing : human, that is, in the 
sense of acting through human conditions in free harmo- 
ny with the best human forces, though superhuman in its 
source and sanctions, as in fact humanity itself is : so 
that the correspondence holds throughout. The kind of 
Christian action and Christian speech wanted for the 
best exhibition of Christian truth, is that where the word 
and the deed just follow and obey the meaning of the 
soul ; where the feeling or conviction of the truth exactly 
measures, spaces, and shapes the outward profession ; 
where the disciple holds it an equal infidelity to pretend 
to more or to less faith than he possesses ; where the 
spirit of zeal just occupies, fills up, and animates the 
body of appearance ; where, in fact, the expression is not 
nicely regulated by a conscious and special reference to 
its external effect, as being exemplary, but by a certain 
spontaneous and irresistible impulse of a holy purpose in 
the breast. The bearing of a religious man, that is, must 
be the bearing of a man ivith religion in Mm and actuat- 
ing him; religion, not as a supplement to his manhood, 
but infused all through it, hallowing and animating it ; 
religion, not taken on, but circulating within ; not worn, 
but informing ; not borrowed, but breathed forth ; 66 sim- 
plicity and godly sincerity." 

To this Christian reality of living there are two prin- 
cipal opponents : hypocrisy on one side, and indifference 
on the other. Each needs to be a little analyzed and 
illustrated. 



REALITY IN RELIGIOUS MANIFESTATIONS. 



23 



Hypocrisy, as respects Christian qualities, is the gen- 
eral name we give to the disposition that aims to appear 
better than it is. The hypocrite seeks the credit of 
qualities which he not only does not possess, but knows 
he does not possess : it is a conscious deception. To 
complete the idea of hypocrisy, there must be a reference 
to some selfish advantage, as custom for a trader, or 
votes for a politician, or fame for a scholar. The pre- 
tention is not only fraudulent, but the fraud of mean- 
ness, — the grossest of all forms of insincerity ; — "the 
lie," as Bacon says, " that sinketh in." The intensity of 
Christ's disgust at this temper may be gathered, as 
from the whole spirit of his teaching, so especially from 
the vivid rebukes he gave it in the Hebrew Pharisees. 
The common instincts of honor accord with the Bible in 
declaring it the guiltiest of all sins that are not crimes. 
It is the most fatal enemy that Religion has to confront, 
and tearing off its mask is her most unwelcome task. 
Yet superficial critics persist in making her chargeable 
for the very insults it heaps upon her. 

On the same side of reality, or departing from it in the 
same direction, as professing more faith than there really 
is, we find a lifeless formalism. In the former case, 
Christian vitality had no existence, and the semblance ol 
it was a pure fabrication. Here it lived once, but has 
gone into decay, and the semblance of it is the surviving 
shape, when the life has gone out. It is to the credit of 
human nature that this sin, if more frequent, is less 
enormous. Yet there is no calculating its practical 
mischiefs, especially in repelling from the Christian 
ranks the sympathies and confidence of the young. 
For, notwithstanding its aberrations, the soul retains this 
trait of native nobility, that it will knowingly trust none 
but true men. 



24 REALITY IN RELIGIOUS MANIFESTATIONS. 



There are two branches of this trespass upon reality : 
excess of ceremony and excess of dogma. 

Like all the great practical interests, religion clothes 
itself in a dress or form, — institutional customs, modes 
of worship, ordinances. So long as we inherit forms, 
and have in our natures an element to which visible 
ceremonies appeal, this tendency will not be eradicated, 
though it is constantly being modified. The real argu- 
ment for religious forms is found in all civilized usages, 
— such as the general arrangement of houses, uniform- 
ity of fashions in clothing, tokens of recognition, familiar 
phrases of salutation, the manners of hospitality. Va- 
riety amounts to modifying the form, never to abolishing 
it, — those sects which have started with the idea of abol- 
ishing it generally ending in a more rigid formality than 
the rest. Yet at this very point lies a constant peril to 
" simplicity and godly sincerity.'' Church history shows 
a perpetual struggle to keep an honest balance between 
the spirit to be expressed and the form expressing it, — 
the faith of the heart and the fashion of the institu- 
tion. Whenever this proportion is lost, the disorder that 
we call formality begins. Observance overlays feelings. 
The faith is not vigorous enough to inform and carry 
off the institution. The temple is too big for the divin- 
ity. Instead of the grace of nature, you have the awk- 
wardness of imitation; instead of speech, mummery; 
instead of expression, grimace ; instead of gesture, beat- 
ing the air. Either there must be an accession of fresh 
feeling within, to reinvigorate the old form, or else the 
old form must be abated, or changed, to suit the changed 
feeling, or buried for decency's sake. Somehow, at any 
rate, the man will not enact what he does not believe. 
That is the one wrong that kills reality and kills respect. 



REALITY IN RELIGIOUS MANIFESTATIONS. 25 

To expect to revive a declining faith merely by multiply- 
ing ceremonies, is as hopeless as to multiply pumps in a 
dry well, or to try to restore the dead by more garments. 
The life to refill these empty veins must come from an- 
other source. It must come, by prayer, from the Spirit of 
God. No preservation of the dried shell of the cistern will 
cheat nature into thinking there is a fountain beneath. 
" Simplicity and godly sincerity " require that every cere- 
monial observance should be so adjusted as to convey the 
real feeling, and no more, — the real faith, and not an arti- 
ficial faith or a faith such as may have been felt once. 
The ceremony was meant for the symbol of a real con- 
viction. When we substitute it for the conviction, and 
let that drop out, going coldly and mechanically through 
the genuflexion or the manipulation, we destroy reality, 
and enter on a mocking falsehood. Yet it is just when 
men find their interest failing, and are alarmed at it, that 
they are tempted to redouble their assiduity at the cere- 
mony. 

A corresponding loss of soul, and sacrifice of reality, 
take place in respect to creeds, or statements of belief. 
Too much ceremony is acting more than we believe: 
too much dogma is affirming more than we believe. 
In each case, the expression outruns the sentiment. The 
salt has lost its savor. No heartless eloquence ever yet 
stole the secret of a sincere conviction. The reason 
that the first period when faith is declining, and before 
it has yet gone over to worldliness or sensuality, is gen- 
erally marked by a multiplication of dogmatic articles, 
or definitions, is that the inward consciousness of want 
alarms the conscience, and the intellect goes to work to 
supply the deficiency. Theologians grow sensitive, exact- 
ing, and controversial. An age of dogmatism is, there- 

3 



26 REALITY IN RELIGIOUS MANIFESTATIONS. 

fore, an age of morbid self-consciousness, when the under- 
standing is trying to do the heart's neglected business. 

The common and offensive form in which these un- 
realities of religious profession appear is cant. The 
source of all cant seems to be an attempt to speak and 
act certain things, which the narrow and perverted mind 
has decided should be the proper utterance of religious 
emotion, — but with the emotion left out. The best 
that can be said of it is, that it is not always hypocrisy, 
but sometimes only stupidity. Of course it is totally 
inconsistent with spirituality, which is always fresh, 
always vital, always real. No soul that has been 
touched with the simple majesty of the Sermon on 
the Mount, that has sat at the feet of the truthful 
Jesus, that takes its spiritual draughts from that foun- 
tain of which if a man drink he shall never thirst again, 
can consent to affront the eternal veracity by offering 
as a plea for piety, or a prayer to the Father, a hollow 
phrase, a sanctimonious manner, a technical expostula- 
tion, a language caught from the ancient lips of faith, 
but emptied of all its living significance, and dwin- 
dled now into the drivel of make-believe. As soon 
could a son ask for his lost mother in the pompous and 
stilted terms that memory has learned from some print- 
ed dialogue. Let learned unbelief, let sneering scep- 
ticism, let ingenious and sophistical infidelity, accu- 
mulate all their arguments upon my child's unfortified 
intelligence, rather than that this paralyzing cant of an 
unfelt devotion should creep with its slow poison into 
the reverence and earnestness of his soul. Paul's justifi- 
cation of his apostleship, " I believed, and therefore have 
I spoken," is the only decent pretext for any preaching 
or any prayer. " Simplicity and godly sincerity." 



REALITY IN RELIGIOUS MANIFESTATIONS. 27 



Godly sincerity. The other danger to reality in a re- 
ligious life and conversation, besides that of its not being 
religiously real, is that it will not be really religious. If 
there is one false tendency to pretend to more faith than 
is felt, there is another, not to let feeling have its free 
and natural way. If some men speak more than is hon- 
est of religion, others have no religion to speak honestly 
of ; and the one class is as far from godly sincerity as the 
other. Never imagine that a diluted, indifferent, half- 
worldly character is a more genuine or more conciliating 
sort of character than one that is decidedly, thoroughly, 
and zealously Christian. If that is the opinion of men 
of the world, as they are called, then men of the world 
do not know the world they are of. There is no fascina- 
tion on earth like that of disinterested and steady enthu- 
siasm. Every class of men will pay it at least a secret 
homage. "When you would win the confidence and in- 
terest of thoughtless persons to the Christian life, do not 
introduce them to professed disciples, who keep their 
Christianity as far as possible in the background of their 
daily interests, and have practised the art of living so 
near the boundary of righteousness as to fraternize with 
the levities and ambiguities and sharp practices outside. 
You might better hope to engage a young man's interest 
in knowledge by being a little ignorant, or in work by 
being a little idle, or in philosophy by being a little fool- 
ish, than try to make him respect religion by meeting 
him half-way and being a little irreligious. I think there 
is a deep, silent loyalty in most men's hearts for that in- 
spired maxim, — " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, 
do it with thy might." Even in the most careless breast 
I suspect there is a notion which might express itself 
something like this : " No ; I am not, I frankly confess it, 



28 



REALITY IN RELIGIOUS MANIFESTATIONS. 



on Christian ground ; I hope I shall be ; I know I ought 
to be ; but whenever I am, it shall be a Christianity that 
is thorough, that is definite, that is positive, that is in 
earnest ; I want that or no religion at all ; no lukewarm, 
sluggish vacillation between God and Mammon ; I would 
rather be Mammon's altogether, and know my master: 
and wherever I see an earnest, consistent, whole-hearted 
Christian, there I find the mightiest argument for the 
Gospel." So it is that godly sincerity becomes a silent 
missionary everywhere, and converts more hearts to Christ 
than all loud and loquacious temporizers and compromis- 
ers with the passions and fashions of the world. 

For two reasons, my friends, — for our own soundness of 
heart, and for the recommendation of the Gospel to others, 
— we want a type of Christian character that is simple 
in its spirituality, and real in all its manifestation. Noth- 
ing is surer to consume the health and vigor of the soul, 
than the constant acting of an unfelt part, — like the pre- 
tender, on the one hand, or the constant denier of his ho- 
liest aspirations, the unrepenting worldling, on the other. 
There is a reflex influence from every tone and gesture 
of insincerity, which strikes back and debilitates the 
moral energies. Utter what you do not believe, and you 
will have less and less capacity for believing anything. 
Pretend what you do not feel, and feeling will die out. 
The retribution is dreadful, and sure, and works by an 
inevitable law. Or if you stifle the religious life that 
really wakes and rises within you, denying it air and 
light, you forfeit no less the blessing of the candid and 
sincere. 

Then a ministry unquestionably gains power, just in 
the degree it drops factitious methods and weapons, and 
abides by the simple instruments of genuine convictions. 



REALITY IN RELIGIOUS MANIFESTATIONS. 29 

We all know the narcotizing tendency of official repetition. 
Pray for the preacher, then, that he may be delivered from 
its lethargy. God will never suffer it to be irresistible. 
Remember that it is in the power of any audience, by a 
responsive and wakeful assistance, to neutralize it, and 
almost to compel from their minister the heartiness they 
prize. Besides, you yourselves are, in some sense, to be 
ministers of heavenly truth. For Christ or against him 
all of you are living, speaking, acting, every day. Does 
the immortal cause take hinderance from your falsity, or 
furtherance from the reality of your righteousness ? 

The exigencies of the Church, the mixtures of sects, the 
progress of theology, all point out the style of life that is 
wanted now, to gain, for the ideas and the spirit of our 
common faith, a fair and cordial reception. It is a life 
that flows evermore from the divine spring of a living 
and personal communion with the Father, and goes to 
help every brother, and to bless every neighbor ; that, while 
it is hid with Christ in God, walks among men with the 
tenderness and dignity of the Son of Man; that asks 
no deference for its profession, but professes simply be- 
cause it cannot help telling its trust, owning its gratitude, 
honoring the Master ; that by open and solemn reverence 
for the times and places of God's worship obeys the man- 
liest of instincts, and by consecration to the Church con- 
fesses the inmost obligation of conscience ; that finds an 
exercise for its Christian principle in all the companies, 
associations, resorts, employments, of the world, and a 
temple for its praise in every scene of joy ; that brings an 
added grace to all the innocent amenities and hopes of 
youth, and sets a more splendid crown on the saintly 
head of age ; that sanctifies society and kneels in the 
closet ; that hallows study and guards homes, and is not 

3* 



30 



REALITY IN RELIGIOUS MANIFESTATIONS. 



afraid to show its sacred spirit of justice and moderation 
in places of sinless amusement; and that everywhere 
bears with it this meek, brave testimony, that by " sim- 
plicity and godly sincerity" it has had its conversation in 
the world. 

God has graciously relieved us of all concern about the 
special shape our Christian life shall put on, that we may 
be the more undivided in our care for its spirit. Have 
the soul of goodness, and it will fashion its own form, 
hour by hour. The best profession of righteousness is 
being righteous. The best form of godliness is the form 
most naturally taken by the power thereof. The best 
temper of church or clergy is " simplicity and godly sin- 
cerity." The best bearing for a believer, making confes- 
sion of his faith, is the bearing with which he comes out 
of the closet of a lowly and solemn communion with his 
God. The best posture of dignity is the attitude that 
yields most friendly service to needy men. The tran- 
scendent and majestic posture of the Son of God was 
when he leaned to wash his followers' feet. 

When this last, most spiritual, and most evangelical 
reformation comes, Christianity will have gone out from 
cloisters, from creeds, from clerical confinements, into the 
open field and broad experience of the people and the 
age. But it will never be by breaking the strictness of 
its commands, nor lowering the standard of its holiness. 
For there is no entrance within the gates of a holier Fu- 
ture, save the new and living way which Christ hath con- 
secrated; nor is there any other name than His given 
under heaven among men, whereby labor or learning, 
wisdom or simplicity, rich or poor, can be saved. 



SERMON III. 

ASKING AND RECEIVING. 

ASK, AND IT SHALL BE GIVEN YOU. — Matt. vii. 7. 

Simple words, but covering the deepest facts in our 
life ! Consider how much they imply : — the being of 
God; the dependence of man; a communion, or inter- 
course, between their spirits ; a feeling of want on the 
part of man ; a faith, with him, that God can fill that 
want; and the absolute truth, independent on his no- 
tions, that God is able to fill it, out of his infinitude. 
These are certainly great facts. They are as impressive 
to a rational intellect by their grandeur, as they are af- 
fecting to the heart by their tenderness. They are at 
once majestic ideas and comforting promises. 

I have sought in the New Testament for my present 
use some expression that should not only contain an in- 
junction to pray, as a duty, but should offer a motive, 
also, turning it into a privilege. This is precisely the 
significance brought out by the turn of the text's lan- 
guage. " Ask, and it shall be given you," conveys a rea- 
son that moves the affections, as well as a precept issued 
to our will. " Ask," which is bare command, borrows 
persuasion, and so couples with itself a new force, from 
the assurance, " It shall be given you." This is the 



32 



ASKING AND RECEIVING. 



form, I suspect, which the doctrine of Prayer takes oft- 
enest, in the minds of those that really feel what it is. 
They are less conscious of being constrained by a sense 
that they ought to pray, than by a feeling that that is the 
way of gaining what they crave. The authority that 
prompts the service is not external, but within. And 
when they would draw then companions into the same 
devout habit, they are more anxious to illustrate it as a 
satisfaction than as an obligation. 

This Discourse will aim to exhibit not so much the 
entire compass of the subject as certain specific and sa- 
lient points in it, — some of them of the nature of diffi- 
culties, — which, as having engaged themselves with some 
interest in one experience, may be fairly supposed to have 
a practical value to more than one. Even of a sphitual 
exercise so permanent among men as prayer, it is true 
that it presents different phases and questions at differ- 
ent times, according to the genius of that period, the 
mental fashions of the day, and the tendencies of relig- 
ious speculation. Whatever affects devotion, affects the 
prime power, the root, and cardinal element of religion 
itself. 

In the study of any subject that deserves to be studied 
at all, we wish to go to competent and authentic sources 
of knowledge. These sources, in respect to sphitual in- 
tercourse between the soul and God, must be two, — • 
biblical authority, and experience. Each of these inter- 
prets the other. If they both agree, they produce a 
double certainty of conviction, so far forth. Whatever 
exceptions reason might take to the report of either one 
alone, they are so beautifully fitted to complete and con- 
firm each other, that reason cannot reject their united 
testimony, without becoming unreason. Outside of 



ASKING AND RECEIVING. 



33 



these two, we cannot expect much light. Abstract rea- 
soning cannot inform us reliably about prayer, because 
prayer is an act eminently and essentially personal ; it is 
an act lying aside from the province of abstractions, be- 
tween two persons, and involves all along personal attri- 
butes, relations, and emotions. On the other hand, mere 
mortal insight is an incompetent teacher here, because 
one of the parties necessary to this high commerce is 
above Nature, the very centre and impersonation of the 
Supernatural. So far as that part of prayer is concerned 
which relates to the feeling of want in us, natural in- 
sight suffices as an expounder ; but the moment we look 
over, to inquire about the answer, — what ground we 
have for confidence that we shall be answered at all, who 
is to answer, and on what conditions the answer is 
gained, — simple intuition leaves us in the dark. Expe- 
rience and Scripture combined, then, exactly meet our 
case, — sufficient guides. Experience suits the personal 
character of prayer, — satisfying the heart as to the ac- 
tual interchange of feeling in it. Revelation lays open 
the supernatural secret, — telling us explicitly of the 
God we pray to, how to worship him, and how infallible 
the guaranty, that, if we ask believing, we shall receive. 

It may be inquired, of what use experience can be in 
teaching us the nature and privilege of praying, when 
the presumption is that the practice has not been begun, 
and the very object of the knowledge sought is to estab- 
lish the habit by which experience comes. The reply 
is twofold. In the first place, by the effect of testi- 
mony, one person's experience is carried over and made 
good for another. One devout soul, bearing simple and 
earnest witness what it has received by asking, reporting, 
with tokens of voice and manner too sincere to be mis- 



34 



ASKING AND RECEIVING. 



taken, the actual peace and strength God has sent it, 
will inevitably act, as by a kind of holy contagion, on the 
consciousness of others, kindling at least a transient flush 
of sympathy, quickening, often, a deeper faith, and ini- 
tiating possibly some young or impressible spirit into the 
heavenly life. Herein lies the pious efficacy of much re- 
ligious biography, modest relations of experience, and the 
friendship of faithful men. They cast private joys into 
a commonwealth of hope, and multiply one real believ- 
er's prayers into the thanksgivings and supplications of a 
Church. 

In the second place, the act of praying, as fast as it is 
encouraged, is found to fit itself in, by a remarkable and 
beautiful harmony, with all our better moods, and all 
higher states of the soul. In other words, the experience 
of prayer, even in its feebler beginnings, is suited to all 
other moral experience, and so seems to gain confir- 
mations from every purer feeling we are conscious of. 
When any soul truly asks God for a spiritual gift, — 
truly, I say, that is, with those dispositions of heart that 
are indispensable to such an act, humility and trust, — 
not only is it thereby better prepared to renew this par- 
ticular act of prayer, but all its Christian traits are 
strengthened at the same moment. Purity becomes 
more transparent, forbearance more patient, charity 
more catholic, uprightness more inflexible, conscience 
more vigilant. Such a divine provision has God made 
to tempt the least stirring of devout inclinations on, — to 
comfort the disciple's earliest resolution, and to lead his 
hesitating feet forward into the steadiness and serenity 
of sainthood. Of course the consciousness of such in- 
ward blessings will be faint, according to the dimness of 
an undisciplined faculty ; but a delicate perception will 



ASKING AND RECEIVING. 



35 



discern them, and an honest perseverance will bring 
them to maturity. A fact of such large and striking 
effects, so uniform as to become a law of our constitu- 
tion, rewarding the first real petition with the germs of 
many reformations and the budding of a cluster of 
graces, justifies us, I think, in saying that prayer is 
enjoined and supported by human experience. 

You will observe that this view discards the maxim, 
which some creeds have dogmatically pronounced, that 
it is a sin for a man to pray till he is sure he is already 
in a state of grace ; discards it, at least, unless it be 
granted that the very impulse he feels to ask God's help 
is evidence that he is already in a state of grace. It can- 
not be wise, not evangelical, not promotive of healthy 
effort, to draw these bars of forbidding iron across the 
avenue to the mercy-seat. The moment man or child 
feels one earnest impulse lifting his desire heavenward, 
that is the providential moment for him to cry, " Our 
Father," and pour out his heart's emotion to the last 
drop, whether of penitence, thanksgiving, or anxiety. 
The Father never rebuffs such eager confidence. To 
deny that holy yearning, to bid it wait, and cautiously 
examine, inspect, and analyze itself to see if it is fit, is 
only to throw a door open to chilling doubts and altered 
moods. It is to refuse a divine call. It is to wrong the 
soul's friendliest angel. It is quenching the Holy Spirit. 
How are we, weak children of vanity, ever to be thorough- 
ly renewed, except we entreat the " Spirit that helpeth our 
infirmities " ? Shall we despise the means, expecting to 
leap miraculously to the end ? Shall we wait, before 
asking, for that elevated frame of the soul, which only 
asking obtains ? Let no such sophistry of perverted 
theologies, and inverted reason, betray us. You would 



36 



ASKING AND RECEIVING. 



not deem it wise, nor filial, to postpone begging your 
injured mother's forgiveness, after the penitent thought 
had once waked in your breast, till your mended life had 
quite recompensed for your disobedience, or till her love 
had overcome your sullen reluctance by violence, Con- 
fession first, peace afterwards. You will not " ask " too 
soon, — if you must " ask " before it is given. The in- 
stant for thee to enter into thy closet is when the first 
thrill of repentant sorrow or holy faith shoots down from 
above, to make the soul mindful of its immortal destiny, 
and its account. 

I have spoken of praying as an act between two per- 
sons, man and God. If we adhere to such language as is 
used in the text, — or to the representation, exactly ac- 
cording with this, that runs through the whole Bible, — ■ 
we shall wonder, probably, that any other philosophy of 
prayer should have ever come into vogue in Christendom, 
than what stands out so plainly in this simple statement. 
Asking, on the one side, and giving, in answer to that ask- 
ing, on the other, would seem to be nearly as unmistakable 
an account of a direct transaction as speech is capable of 
composing. Especially would it appear to stand clear 
of all possible ambiguity, when we remember that the 
whole Revelation, from end to end of its records, offers 
no hint of any different theory ; that it was precisely in 
this spirit, and with this understanding, that every bibli- 
cal believer prayed, from Adam in Eden to John in Pat- 
mos ; — Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, all patriarchs speak- 
ing to Jehovah, and answered by Him ; Moses, Samuel, 
Elijah, and the whole line of valiant, praying prophets ; 
David, whose devotions have been the common language 
of worship through both dispensations, and bear to-day 
fresher marks of perpetuity than when his own tears fell 



ASKING AND RECEIVING. 



37 



upon the lines he wrote, — whose petitions were account- 
ed worthy to be taken upon the lips of the Redeemer 
himself amidst the tortures of the crucifixion ; the dis- 
ciples, the mother, evangelists, apostles, — all, with un- 
divided agreement, asking the Father for what their soul 
craved, and receiving at God's invisible hand, immedi- 
ately, blessings, that, but for such asking, could not have 
been bestowed. Not a doubt hangs over a phrase of the 
narrative. The witnesses are explicit. There are placed 
before us two parties. One is just as literally and exact- 
ly a person as the other ; the divine side of the mutual 
transaction involving precisely the same attributes of 
personality as the human, — no hint to the contrary ; and 
— mark especially — the fact of conscious request and 
conscious compliance every way as distinct — the differ- 
ence between faith and sense being of course granted — 
as if a hand were visibly stretched out on one side open, 
and were visibly filled from the other. 

Now, if the biblical authority did not settle this truth 
in exactly this form, falling back on experience some of 
us certainly would have facts to produce, which, how- 
ever they might affect sceptics, must, for us, for ever 
place the literal doctrine of asldng and receiving beyond 
all misgiving, as the only possible theory of prayer. 

Yet into such labyrinths of confusion, and such mazes 
of perplexity, has theological thinking brought itself, that 
a stark rejection of this doctrine is no very rare phenom- 
enon in modern theology, so called. Prayer, instead of 
that distinct, specific, blessed thing, — an asking for the 
Sake of receiving, — finding its clear and touching image 
in the daily beauty saluting all our eyes of the confiding 
and hearkening communion between child and parent, — 
instead of this, it is — what shall we say ? or rather, what 

4 



38 



ASKING AND RECEIVING. 



do some men not say it is ? — a convenient name for al- 
most any reputable deed or any innocent state : prayer is 
want; prayer is well-doing or well-wishing ; a good life 
is prayer : to work morally is to pray ; to have a general 
sense of subjection to the Infinite, is to pray. There is 
no enumerating these loose, rhetorical, paradoxical, and 
superficial definitions. The only radical feature in which 
they are all agreed, is in shading off prayer into some 
other thing that is not prayer, and should have another 
name ; in confounding things that differ ; in destroying 
that one essential ingredient without which no prayer 
can be, — an asking on the part of man for a granting 
on the part of God. 

There is one abuse of the term, however, that takes a 
different shade, and lurks under specious pretences. It 
is this, — that what we call prayer is nothing but a 
mode of self-excitation. We are exhorted to take the 
attitudes, and use all forms and words of prayer,- — just 
as if what the act pretends were really true, and there 
were literally a God to hear and answer, only because 
it has been found on experiment that this is a successful 
way of stirring us up to do better. We exert ourselves 
more, and so are more blessed by Nature, who loves to 
see her children toil. We are refreshed by making our 
supplications to Heaven, only so far as we impose on 
ourselves the trick of asking of a God what man is just as 
competent to give himself. It might seem to be enough, 
with single-minded persons, to explode this heresy, that 
it inextricably involves a duplicity, — such a one as to 
implicate our veneration and profane worship, — insulting 
the God that we only approach in a rhetorical device, 
and pretend to pray to for effect. I say nothing of the 
impossibility of a soul's elevating itself above itself, with 



ASKING AND RECEIVING. 



39 



no purchase outside of itself. The moral objection is 
enough. The error only illustrates the working of a phi- 
losophy that cuts itself loose from the New Testament. 
66 Ask, and it shall be given you." It is enough for us to 
pray as Jesus prayed. This entangles us in no subtleties, 
and freezes us with no negations. It takes us straight to 
our Father, with no misgiving that he veritably hears what 
we pray. This places the object of our religious confi- 
dence beyond ourselves, and so clears us of that besetting 
sin of egotism, which is as destructive of church life as it 
is of nobleness of character and personal piety. It cen- 
tres faith outside this narrow region of self, — even our 
better self, — and gives assurance and comfort, " which 
only he that feels it knows," by hanging every circum- 
stance of life, the most minute or most afflicting, on the 
direct and immediate word of our Lord, in whose spirit 
we are embosomed, in whose foresight our little plans 
are lost, in whose hand we are only instruments, moved 
hither and thither as he will. This Christianizes our 
prayers ; for it makes them with their answers that veri- 
table communion, that literal asking and receiving be- 
tween the soul and God, which is as strictly personal as 
the petition of any child and the answer of any parent, — 
a precious praying, — real praying, — the Bible's praying. 

At this point another question has been sometimes 
started : How such specific answers to prayer can com- 
port with the regularity of Providence and the govern- 
ment of the world by appointed laws. Unquestionably 
this is one of the deep secrets passing our limited knowl- 
edge, and belonging to the Infinite Mind. It is no deeper, 
nor harder to reconcile, than a hundred other facts in the 
Divine economy, which yet we must admit, or deny sense 
and faith both : such, for example, as the fact that we are 



40 



ASKING AND RECEIVING. 



all free to choose how we shall act, and yet are com- 
pletely bound in the hands of Omnipotence ; that God is 
almighty and all-good, and yet leaves his children liberty to 
do wrong. These are transcendent mysteries, simply be- 
cause they are the doings of a transcendent Being, — God. 
In the end, we shall find, I suppose, that there is no more 
contradiction between a fixed order of laws and special 
answers to our asking, than there is between a genera] 
household arrangement for their children's good, on the 
part of earthly parents, and their daily favors granted in 
answer to particular requests. Through all this stable 
and mighty system of irreversible decrees, — laws of 
growth and decay, summer and winter, evening and 
morning, centripetal and centrifugal forces, regimen and 
health, cause and consequence, — there plays for ever the 
silent presence of God, the unrestricted action of God's 
free will. So has he built the world, and organized its 
constitution. The balance of these two forces — Law 
and Liberty — is the wonder of the universe, the super- 
nal sign set upon it. Before we pray, he is Love itself ; 
yet he hears the prayer, and sends a blessing that could 
not have come without. The uniform shelter of laws 
that we can rely upon in our every-day business is mer- 
ciful ; and so are those direct, impressive tokens of his 
listening spirit, which make a part of the experience of 
devout souls that no reasoning can take away. 

This care extends to the least particle of creation, — to 
the windings of a worm, as much as to the circle of a 
planet ; to the eyeball of a fly, as much as to the splendor 
of the sun ; to your lowly path each morning from street 
to street, as much as to the august pilgrimage of Arctu- 
rus along the " streets of stars," or to the rise and fall of 
empires, the battle that captures an old fortress, or the 



ASKING AND RECEIVING. 



41 



reformation that liberates nations. Believing this, I can 
no more hesitate to ask a Divine direction for the details 
of my common life, than for the salvation of my soul. 
Indeed, do we not know that the salvation of the soul is 
nothing else than the safety of the soul, and so that it is 
bound up inextricably with these very familiar incidents, 
— their effects upon the soul, and, in turn, the soul's use of 
them, determining its salvation or its perdition ? What 
companions I shall be thrown among, what tasks I shall 
have brought me to do, what difficulties I shall have to 
encounter, what misunderstandings and consequent alien- 
ations I shall be rescued from, what words I shall be in- 
wardly prompted to speak, what temptations I may be 
spared each time I go out of my house or return to it, — 
these, and all the class of events they belong to, are the 
very material out of which salvation or ruin is wrought ; 
and so they are fit subjects of prayer. They are things 
wherein God answers. For over the motions of heart and 
mind — others as well as my own — he holds an unceas- 
ing control. And if you watch the history of almost any 
hour, you will see many junctures in it where two ways 
parted before you, and the choice was more with God than 
yourself. In this spirit, and with this faith, a Christian 
will find no difficulty in asking for earthly good. If he 
does it regarding its moral connections and influences on 
character, it is lawful, reverent prayer; such prayer as was 
often on the lips of righteous men of old, and had signal 
answers; such prayer — for life, health, rain, fruitful sea- 
sons — as James enjoins, citing Elijah as an example. 

The mode of the answer rests with God. If he sees it 
will strengthen faith, and, taking all bearings into view, 
fulfil his will, he may answer it directly, according to the 
form of the request. If he sees that this would encourage 

4* 



42 



ASKING AND RECEIVING. 



worldly-mindedness, or hinder any of his broader purposes, 
he will send a secret response into the heart. One thing 
we may always know beforehand; if the earthly advan- 
tage holds a higher place in our desires than spiritual pu- 
rity or God's truth, it is no prayer of faith, and carries in 
its own nature the forewarning, that, even for our own 
sake, we must be denied. 

This leads in the last great feature of the present Doc- 
trine of Devotion. Every asldng that expects to receive 
must be an asking with submission, — willing to wait 
long before receiving, — willing to be utterly refused. 
For along with every act of such communion goes this 
attendant truth, never to be forgotten, — that it is mortal 
weakness, ignorance, and imperfection communing with 
everlasting Power, boundless Knowledge, perfect Holi- 
ness. No doubt, " Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbe- 
lief," is a right, and often our most becoming supplica- 
tion; and some confession must be implied in every 
worship. But unless we can feel, while we are asking, 
that we could cheerfully give up the things we ask for, at 
God's command, I suppose we are not in the true atti- 
tude of prayer. This must be that spirit of believing, or 
faith, that Christ refers to, where he says, " Whatsoever 
ye ask believing, ye shall receive." Thomas a Kempis, 
who seems to have entered farther into the inmost shrine 
of devotion than any writer since the Apostle John, has 
this passage : — " Let this be the language of all thy re- 
quests : £ Lord, if it be pleasing to thee, may this be 
granted, or that withheld ; but if thou knowest it will con- 
duce not to the health of my soul, remove far from me 
my desire. Give me what thou wilt, and in what meas- 
ure, and at what time. Place me where thou wilt, and 
freely dispose of me in all things. Do thou lead and turn 



ASKING AND RECEIVING. 



43 



me whithersoever thou pleasest.' For," he adds, " every 
desire that appeareth to man to be right and good, is not 
born from heaven ; and it is difficult always to determine 
truly whether the desire is prompted by the good spirit of 
God, or thy own selfish spirit," I have known devout 
persons to stand year after year, in utter wonder that 
their prayers, so reasonable in appearance, brought no 
visible return ; yet the faith that came at last out of that 
trial and proving, in a furnace seven times hotter than 
fire, " more precious than gold that perisheth," finally 
justified such patience by its splendor. 

For, even while we wait, through all the breathings of 
our aspiration, from the first hesitating, stammering whis- 
per of entreaty, on to the last strong syllable of praise 
when faith triumphs over the failing flesh, — prayer is 
ever, moment by moment, its own sufficing recompense. 
Its words do react on your soul like a benediction. Its 
every struggle is a consolation, and every sigh is peace. 
It puts the world under your feet. It makes all things 
yours, while ye are Christ's and Christ is God's. The 
spirit comes back from its seasons of converse with God, 
into the strife of the world, its interior face radiant with 
a veil of glory like that Moses wore when he came down 
from the mount. Every calamity is disenabled to agi- 
tate, and every cross to terrify you. You say, with the 
brave serenity of Paul: " What can separate me from this 
unspeakable joy ? Shall tribulation, or famine, or sword ? 
Shall loss of goods, or pain, or bereavement by death ? 
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors ! " 
The very intellectual interest that will be shed over a life 
where this mutual interacting of prayer and fulfilment so 
stimulates the soul, rewards the understanding, while a 
far profounder and holier satisfaction descends into, illu- 
mines, and inspires the heart. 



44 



ASKING AND RECEIVING. 



Not for ourselves alone are these heavenly gifts attain- 
able, but by one for another. Intercession, — that too 
often neglected privilege of prayer, even among those who 
have learned the Christian lessons, — intercession, it is 
the divinest gift of friendship. By its celestial ministry, 
conquering all distances, the thoughts of separated spirits 
meet, in God. When patient love, in its reserve or its 
baffled hope, can do no more, it can ask on all it loves 
the love of Christ. When ingratitude makes self-sacri- 
fice itself helpless, and repulses all tenderness with malig- 
nant hate, or unconcern almost as torturing, Prayer can 
still watch, and guard, and supplicate, and weep ; and 
God counts its tears. Mothers for their erring sons ; sis- 
ters for their falling brothers ; companions for each other ; 
believing children for worldly fathers ; all souls for all 
souls, — prayer is their sure refuge, the one office of 
affection and faith that no indifference can deny. 

In the lives of the Fathers there is an account of Abbot 
Lucius. To a company of young men that were boast- 
ing how they prayed continually, but never worked, he 
said : " Not so ; for if you never work, then, while you 
eat and sleep, you neither work nor pray. I will show 
you how you may pray continually. I am not ashamed 
to labor with my hands ; and while I work, I send forth 
still, between, some short petitions to my gracious God. 
When I have some quantity of finished work, I give 
away about a third thereof to the poor. And now, these 
poor men praying for me while I eat or sleep, through 
them I pray without ceasing." 

Over every day's life, let us write the twofold inscrip- 
tion, — " Not slothful in business " ; and " Continuing 
instant in prayer." 



SERMON 



IV. 



THE SOUL'S SEARCH. 

SEEK, AND YE SHALL FEND. Matt. vii. 7. 

An intelligent criticism has often pointed it out as one 
of the secrets of moral impression, as well as of rhetori- 
cal effect, that the true power of eloquence may be al- 
most as strikingly displayed in what is omitted from a 
discourse as in its contents. That is to say, an orator 
may accomplish his persuasion as well by knowing what 
to leave out as what to put in. Of course, this skill pre- 
supposes a wise acquaintance with the structure of lan- 
guage, and its relations to thought, a delicate perception 
of the laws of association, and the knowledge how to 
make what is said suggest that richer part of wisdom 
which must for ever remain unsaid. But whatever we 
may think of the maxim as a judgment on the art of ex- 
pression, it certainly refers to a great and yet a simple 
fact in our spiritual economy. It might be shown, ] 
think, that there are omissions in the New Testament 
more spiritually significant than any speech out of it. 
An example occurs in this passage. The Son of God 
says to the world, " Seek, and ye shall find." He does 
not there tell us what we are to seek. It is enough that 
he urges us, with such condensed concern, to seek, — for 



46 



THE SOUL'S SEARCH. 



we shall find. What the object of this ceaseless and 
infinite quest shall be, — so far as the immediate lan- 
guage goes, — is left sublimely unuttered. In this case, 
as in many of the utterances that break the most solemn 
pauses, and declare the grandest truths, the unmen- 
tioned thing is the supreme thing. Precisely because 
there is but one word that can fill the blank, no word is 
needed. 

Observe now how impressive the inevitable inference. 
It is like saying that the one true search of man can have 
but one object, — God. What it is to find God, we may 
try to state in different forms of words. But they must 
all have one meaning. To live daily under the con- 
scious inspiration and guidance of his Spirit, is to find 
him. To believe in Christ, provided that belief em- 
braces practice as well as faith, and engages the affections 
as well as the intellect, — which it must do if it is living 
and sincere, — this is to find God; because God is in 
Christ. To keep a conscious harmony of one's own will 
with God's will, so as to gain spiritual liberty, patient 
submission, is to find him. To blend justice and mercy 
toward man with prayer, is to find him. To live so that 
the ruling aim, or uppermost purpose, shall be under the 
constant control of the principles of Christianity, is to 
find him. To be spiritually-minded, and so discern spir- 
itual things, is to find him. Of course, then, to be really 
seeking any of these things, — which, after all, are essen- 
tially the same thing, — is to seek God. 

But in the fact that Jesus does not specify in words 
what we are to seek, we may find this truth hidden; 
namely, that if you once fairly bring yourself to the in- 
quiry what you shall seek, with a resolve to seek it, you 
can come to but one reasonable answer. There is only 



THE SOUL'S SEARCH. 



47 



one aim large enough, and noble enough, to satisfy your 
soul's hunger, when you make a fair, free, deliberate de- 
cision. I believe that, if we could all see how we choose, 
when we hesitate between God and Mammon, we must 
choose aright ; especially if the choice is made before a 
corrupt habit has hardened the wrong growth, and stif- 
fened the twist of sin into a permanent deformity, and 
partially crippled the will. Really and reasonably to 
choose, will be to choose for eternal life over the loss of 
it. That glorious necessity God has wrought into the 
very texture of our being, — a bright and everlasting wit- 
ness of his own truth. Otherwise, reason is a mockery, 
the invitations of Heaven are a dismal satire on our help- 
lessness, and our very nature is a fallacy. 

What shall we conclude, then, looking at mankind as 
they are, but that many of them have not fairly chosen ? 
When you see a life whose inmost motive is clearly self- 
ishness, and whose whole face is stripped of every im- 
press of the sense of spiritual obligation, you may safely 
say that life has never passed under any experience that 
deserved to be called a choice. No doubt it has a direc- 
tion, and a motion. So has every vessel that floats 
adrift. We live on waters that are never at a dead calm. 
If we neither sail nor row, we are driven. But such a 
man either follows the current that the world's fashion 
has set, or is the plaything of gusty appetites. He has 
not grasped the helm in the hand of a strong, individual, 
and morally independent will, conquering at once the tide 
of social example and the caprices of his own passion. 
He has not lifted his look to the immortal lights that 
burn fixed and serene in the sky, and laid his course by 
their heavenly admonition. Who shall measure the 
guilt of that wretched refusal to choose ? 



48 



THE SOUL'S SEARCH. 



Some kinds of election such men have undoubtedly 
made. They have chosen, perhaps, which one of the 
many modes of self-enrichment or self-gratification they 
will take. They have chosen the path and the scene of 
then property-search, or their pleasure-search. They have 
chosen whether they will be rich by one set of tools or 
another, — by dry goods, or hard-ware, or jewelry, or 
stocks, — by a hammer and chisel, or a plough. They 
have chosen whether they will be famous at the bar, or 
in the medical faculty, or in a pulpit, or in Congress. 
They have chosen whether they will get gain in New 
York or Boston, San Francisco or Calcutta. Have they 
chosen between self-service and God's service ? Have 
they chosen whether their property shall be got accord- 
ing to the New Testament, or according to the Satanic 
text-book of expediency ? Have they chosen whether 
their chief pleasure shall be that of a luxurious table and 
the pride of a handsome establishment, or the pleasure 
of blessing then fellows and feeling the beat of a satisfied 
heart ? Have they chosen whether, by whatever instru- 
ments, in whatever city or village or country, through 
whatever calling, with fortune or without, admired or 
negleeted, courted or despised, they will be brave for the 
right, and carry out of the world a conscience undefiled ? 
In one phrase, have they chosen — have you chosen — 
between the servile obedience to interests that all termi- 
nate in earthly comfort, and the nobility of a character 
upright before all men, bending with humble devotion 
only before God, rich in good works, a disciple of Christ ? 
Is there one among us all that hesitates an instant which 
he ought to choose, if he choose at all ? How true is it, 
then, that where our spiritual safety is perilled, it is not 
so much that we do not come to the true life when our 



THE SOUL'S SEARCH. 



49 



faces have once been turned to seek for it, as that we do 
not turn them to seek for it ! The one primary, funda- 
mental, underlying question is the question we have left 
unsettled. Seek, really seek, and ye shall find. 

Christian faith is the most appropriate action of the 
soul ; and the way of a righteous life, as it is thrown 
open by the Son of God, is the answer of Heaven to the 
soul's wants. Now if this be true ; if the heart of man 
wants the Gospel as much as the body wants food, and 
is the organ of holy feeling ; if the spiritual atmosphere of 
religious belief and principle is as exactly and beautifully 
fitted to our inward life, as the outward air is to the 
lungs, or light to the eye ; and if every irreligious person 
is out of nature, disordered and disorderly, a morbid and 
abnormal creature, till he stands in reconciliation with 
his Maker, — then the seeldng for the way must be the 
foremost concern of all health-desiring and rational souls. 
How to find and keep it is the simple question, beside 
which all the decoration and ambition of our material es- 
tate, all dress and bargaining, all opulence and office, 
even all learning and accomplishments of the mind, are 
humbled into secondary things. 

I said secondary. I ought to use some stronger word. 
The distinction is more than one of degrees. The alter- 
native between a life taking its law from Heaven and a 
life taking its law from any of the forms of self-interest, 
— ranging as these forms do over all grades of guilt and 
shame, from the beastly sensuality that eats and drinks 
and lusts, all the more reckless to-day because its to-mor- 
row looks so ghastly, on to the passion for power and 
splendor which is the "last infirmity of noble minds," 
but none the less ungodly because it is the last, — this 
alternative is always the simple one between piety and 

5 



50 



THE SOUL'S SEARCH. 



atheism. We cannot keep a deity that shall simply wait 
on our table, or whisper to us beforehand the favorable 
chances of a speculation. There are no wages, whether 
occasional attendance at a sanctuary, or any other pro- 
fessions, that can suborn Providence into a skilful stew- 
ard and butler, or an intelligent foreign correspondent 
to keep you advised of commercial prospects. God must 
have the heart or nothing, — and have its direct loyalty 
and love, or none that is accepted. He looks in to see 
which way the inmost spirit kneels, — and not Sunday 
only, but all days, — whether towards the Father of 
Righteousness, or some idol of the popular admiration. 
He lifts the folds that are plaited so cunningly over our 
inmost selves, and judges what that inner role is by 
which we refuse or accept bribes from the hand of man or 
woman, by which we do or scorn to do an unclean deed. 
So that, in reality, the difference between seeking God, 
and seeking him not, is something more than a relative 
or comparative difference. It is absolute and decisive. 
It supposes a distinct centre of attraction, and so another 
sort of life ; what the New Testament calls a " new 
man." You may ascend from the flattest plain to the 
adjoining hill, from the hill to the loftier table-land, from 
that to the proud range that puts its snowy shoulder 
against the arch of blue, and up still from that to the sol- 
itary and imperial peak that seems to soar quite through 
the sky, but still you remain a citizen of the earth, and 
your climbing feet are held fast by the old gravitation. 
It is not till you spring over to another planet that you 
are clear of the sublunary imprisonment, and become an 
inhabitant of the heavens. Now God is willing that our 
home should be on this world ; places are nothing ; he even 
offers to send heaven down to us. But the heart must 



THE SOUL'S SEARCH. 



51 



confess to an attraction from beyond the little globe of 
self. We " cast anchor upwards." " No man ever went 
to heaven whose heart was not there before him." If 
we would u find " the life eternal, we must " seek " some- 
thing better than the best kind of material good. 

All our life is a search. We are a race of seekers. 
The eyes planted in the front of the head are a symbol 
of our inquisitive constitution. With some of us the 
aim is consciously taken, is clear, is fixed, and embraces, 
in one, the perfecting of character and the glory of God. 
These, call them by whatever name, of whatever sect or 
no sect, of whatever nation or rank, are the men that 
God loves and honors. They are the saints, modern or 
ancient ; as good if they walk our streets to-day, as if 
they held sweet counsel with Fenelon in Cambray, or 
knelt with St. Cecilia, or wept with Paul on the shore 
at Miletus. And because they find the Christ the only 
way unto the Father, they are the true Church of the 
living Lord. All of us, I hope, have been privileged to 
know such. 

Then there are others who seek nothing so noble, 
nothing so generous, nothing so holy. They seek how 
much they can call their own, by whatever means, — of 
how much benefit they can hold a monopoly, from how 
large a place in God's universe they can keep other men 
off, and how much envy they can rouse in rivals and 
neighbors. These have never mastered their baser and 
greedier instincts, and so have never known the divine 
joy of being blessed for their benefactions, and have 
never tasted of the peace that passeth understanding. 
Very often God punishes us, by letting us have what we 
seek. And so such persons seem to succeed. Men of 
that stamp are affluent and respected ; or rather, the ac- 



52 



THE SOUL'S SEARCH. 



cessories, under which the man is concealed, are respected. 
It requires a spiritual judgment to uncover their empti- 
ness, and show how real ruin is compatible with appar- 
ent success. 

There are none, I suppose, who can be said literally to 
seek nothing ; but there are those — and these, too, you 
have seen — who come so near to that, that no man, look- 
ing on, can guess what it is they seek. The aims are so 
minute and so variable as not to be easily detected, — 
one thing this morning, another this evening, all trifling, 
and all ineffectual. Find what the magnet is that draws 
each one on, and you have discovered his character. 
His supreme desire fixes his value. To know what he 
seeks is to know what manner of man he is, better than 
by knowing in what way he seeks it : just as you can judge 
a traveller's destination better by seeing which way his 
face is set, than by observing his mode of conveyance. 

To the seekers of mere material and selfish comfort, 
one serious consideration is presented by the progress of 
history. That kind of search is sinking. Every new 
day that breaks into the sky degrades it ; both because 
new lights are stationed about it, in our educational and 
industrial wakefulness, to show its shame, and because 
the practical tendencies of the time force upon material- 
ism a more and more hard and sottish character. In 
more imaginative periods, romance threw about idolatry 
at least the graces of fancy, and made it poetical. Now 
it is either shrewd or stolid. It is the idolatry of the 
arithmetic, the stock-list, and the palate ; not of fable 
and heroism. The noblest element has vanished. It is 
bare gluttony. If you are going to worship the animal, 
then return to the inventions of Egyptian and Grecian 
genius, — 16 the fair humanities of old religion." Give 



THE SOUL'S SEARCH. 



53 



us back at least the simplicity of feticism ivith its sen- 
suality. Rebuild the Pantheon. Relight the fires on 
Pagan altars. Repeople the woods with dryads, and the 
waters with nymphs. Anything, rather than the gross 
surfeit of appetite, and the clinking creed of dollars ! 
And if you cannot do that, take it as a sober hint that 
God's providence does not mean to have materialists in 
the world at all. Seek something worthier of your hu- 
manity. Seek a larger and purer spirit from the Father, 
who grants such gifts by his Son, and ye shall find. 

In the text there is a task enjoined, and there is a 
promise published. The task is for man ; the promise is 
from God. 

The task is for man. Seeking is a labor. We are 
oast upon our faculties. Faith itself is not passive. 
Why is that pearl of great price, a Christian character, 
concealed behind so many counterfeits that glitter, and 
perplexities that hinder, if not to stimulate our zeal in 
seeking it ? Self-denial is a part of that search. So is 
drudgery, familiar as our own hands. So is patience 
under contradiction, and the crucifixion of pride. If a 
young man asks me how he shall be a Christian in the 
midst of the sorceries of politics, the temptations of mer- 
chandise, and the profligacy of convivial manners, and yet 
is not willing to brace himself against the reproof or ridi- 
cule of his elders and the blandishments of seducing 
companions, to begin every day with Bible and prayer, 
and even to persevere through loss of income, I only 
remind him of another young man who had it said to 
him, " How hardly shall they that have riches enter into 
the kingdom of Heaven," because he was not equal to 
the sacrifice. And if a distressed spirit in woman, 
scourged by the pain of doubt, or entreated by the Holy 

5* 



54 



THE SOUL'S SEARCH. 



Spirit,, inquires for the way of life, and yet will not bend 
her vanity or her self-reliance lowly at her Redeemer's 
feet, I remind her of the sister that was more careful and 
troubled to display her hospitality to Jesus, than to give 
up all, and put her heart into the Saviour's hand, and sit 
satisfied with his love. These do not truly seek, and 
cannot find. 

The promise is from God. Seek, and ye shall find. 
Was a Divine promise ever broken or forgotten ? There 
is a secret misgiving, or uncertainty, whether a thorough 
consecration, a righteous character, will bring the peace, 
or strength, or glory, which the Almighty has engaged it 
shall. I believe Christian people themselves do not duly 
weigh the affront of distrusting God's pledges. We 
deem it an insult to doubt man's word, yet discredit 
the Unchangeable's. The loss is double. We dwarf 
the proportions of our own goodness. We alienate the 
blessing that falls only on believers. So seek eternal 
life, then, as those that know they shall find it. 

You know the ways and the helps of this seeking. 
They are fixed and definite as the rules for any human 
attainment. They are studious and self-examining 
meditation, the exclusion from the heart of conflicting 
affections, a daily intimacy, through the record, with the 
perfect Christ and the whole body of Revelation, prayers 
as punctual as the sun, the dashing away of that one 
dear dark idol which stands between almost every heart 
and the light of Heaven, and the faithful applying of the 
spirit of holiness given straight from God to one district 
after another of the practical territory of experience. 
Was there ever one who so sought, and did not find ? 

Do not say the object of this infinite and immortal 
search is vague or obscure ; and that you do not know 



THE SOUL'S SEARCH. 



55 



what to seek, because the precept does not define it. As 
well say you do not know where the upward look of the 
pleading and weeping eye of the Magdalen is directed, 
because the Master's form is not painted on the canvas 
above her head. As well wonder why the name of the 
Unnamable, to whom the vast dome is reared, and 
whose silent praise every arch and pillar speaks, is not 
stamped in gilded letters on the front of St. Peter's. 
There are meanings at once so plain and so august, that 
to encase them in syllables is to belittle their dignity. 
The design of the whole framework of your human being 
is as evidently God's worship, as that of the cathedral. 
Know ye not that ye are the temple of God ? And yet 
what proportion of the souls passing forward to man's 
estate and dangers and duties in this Christian com- 
munity, what proportion of the young men that enter 
Christian sanctuaries, have seized on the grand purpose 
so manifestly held out to them ? have taken a religious 
stand, — I do not say before men, but before them- 
selves, — and so determined their lives towards the glo- 
rious end ? The question is not put querulously, nor as 
from a pulpit's formality, but as from one erring man to 
his fellows, in a common need of strength. Character, 
spirituality, righteousness, is the end. Christ is the way. 
u Seek, and ye shall find." 

There is something in this inspiriting call for every 
stage of our spiritual progress. The youngest child that 
hears me is not too young to be a seeker under Christ, 
for Christ took younger children into his arms. The 
maturest manhood or saintliest womanhood among you 
ought to be seeking still, and for ever seeking, — because 
the best are weak, truth is boundless, and the highest 
soul stands at an infinite remove from God. They that 



56 



THE SOUL'S SEARCH. 



have not yet steadfastly set their faces as though they 
would go up higher, are encouraged and solicited. They 
that have gone some way are bidden to press on. They 
that have mastered the worst enemies are cheered for- 
ward to be more than conquerors through Him who hath 
loved them, — whose face they have beheld, whose breath 
they have felt. Nor is it said to one of them more than 
to another, " Seek, and ye shall find." 

From all the fountains of religious feeling, whose liv- 
ing waters leap as if an angel troubled them, — from all 
trees of wise thought, whose leaves are for the healing of 
the nations, — from all the lights in the starry heavens of 
the elder time, the ages of faith, — from the spirits about 
us, on the right and the left, purer and calmer than our 
own, and shaming our uncertain steps, — from our own 
failures and mortifications, — from prayer and commun- 
ion, from Bible and Providence, from Church and life, — 
above all, direct from that mighty and loving heart of 
Jesus, out of which flows the spirit without measure, — let 
us continually and faithfully seek, — seek summit above 
summit of gracious attainment, — seek depth below 
depth of God's unfathomable love. So shall we not lose 
the way, and miss our Father's house, nor come halting 
and maimed there, but erect and healthful souls, save as 
we are bended in gratitude at the mercy that forgives, in 
penitence for the sins to be forgiven, and in reverence at 
the vision of Him who makes his people whole. 



SERMON V. 



THE SOUL'S CORONATION. 

THE LIFE IS MORE THAN MEAT. — Luke xii. 23. 
YOUR REASONABLE SERVICE. Rom. xii. 1. 

I have drawn the two members of the text together, 
out of their separate places in the New Testament, as 
they proceeded from the lips of Jesus and the pen of 
Paul, because the precise thought by which I wish to 
direct my discourse is more clearly brought out by their 
combination than by any single passage. The com- 
pound force of the two phrases is this : to keep the claims 
and the interests of the spiritual nature in us paramount 
over all other claims and all other interests, is to act 
according to the strictest rule of what is reasonable. 

Paramount, for in the divine economy of our constitu- 
tion there is unquestionably an order of preferments. No 
human society has ever adjusted its ranks, nor any gov- 
ernment allotted its privileges, according to that heavenly 
gradation, because no legislature has ever fully copied 
its principle, and no community has embodied its spirit. 
But God has distributed creation in a series of ascending 
honors. Christianity, his interpreter, tells us how they 
range and where they culminate. That uncrowned and 
often unacknowledged king, the human soul, stands nev- 



58 



THE SOUL'S CORONATION. 



ertheless the native and hereditary sovereign of our mor- 
tal estate. We may rob it of its titles ; we may trample 
its royalty under the feet of our passions ; we may fill its 
throne with those vile usurpers, our sensual desires ; yet 
through all abuses, through ages of treachery and malfea- 
sance, the soul waits, pleading its inborn majesty, assert- 
ing its divine pedigree, appealing to its parentage in 
God, showing its inalienable and immortal right to rule, 
and expecting its final coronation. u The life is more 
than meat." Through the inspiration of the spirit, the 
seat of this life is the soul. There is the centre of all 
movement, the spring of power, the point of intense 
concern. All greatness proceeds thence. Ail well-di- 
rected anxieties converge thither. Blind as we become 
to the magnificent fact, whatever interests agitate mar- 
kets and families and states, — whatever influences play 
through street, shop, congress, the academy and college, 
no less than the Church, — terminate at last in the 
soul. For that, in the original design, however we us 
individuals pervert or come short of it, the farmer's 
tillage rears and reaps the summer's grain on all the 
quiet meadows and slopes ; for that the arms of labor 
swing in ten thousand workshops ; for that the printing- 
press is worked and types are cast ; for that, at last, if 
the Sermon on the Mount is true, the lily blossoms and 
the sparrow flies. Institutions are founded, whether their 
founders remember it or not, statute-books are written, 
cities are built, new countries are colonized, factories 
occupy the streams, exploring expeditions animate the 
commercial map of the world, for the soul. It is not, 
after all, for the fortunes that are made, the fabrics 
woven, the speed attained, the money multiplied, the 
world's-fahs exhibited. These are only means to an end ; 



THE SOUL'S CORONATION. 



59 



and that end is man's spiritual education. By far the 
deepest question you can ask respecting any of these 
mighty agencies is, What kind of souls is it helping to 
rear ? what sort of characters is it fashioning ? Is it leav- 
ing men with a larger or leaner humanity, with a purer or 
weaker piety ? And the most momentous question any 
individual can put to himself, respecting all these forms 
of outward activity and acquisition, is the old evan- 
gelical and personal one, — " What shall it profit a man, 
though he gain the whole world and lose his soul ? " 
" The life is more than meat." 

I need not tell you how apt the immediate operators 
of all this vast enterprise are to forget its real import. 
In their eagerness to keep the machinery in motion, and 
to harvest its tangible rewards, they overlook its grandest 
purpose. The men who flatter themselves they manage 
these gigantic forces, fail, how often ! to discern the final 
object of such a splendid apparatus. They practically 
invert the true saying ; they act as if the meat were more 
than the life. Colonizers of Melbourne and San Fran- 
cisco fancy the only office of those gates to golden pal- 
aces is to open avenues for worldly ambition to stride 
through more ambitiously ; while God would make them 
theatres for the development, hereafter, of nobler speci- 
mens of moral beauty. Some man of science comes 
among us and expounds the mysteries of Arctic navi- 
gation. Avaricious eyes see nothing in this penetrat- 
ing of Polar oceans but an enlargement of the sphere 
of traffic, or a new facility for transportation ; but Provi- 
dence is only getting the earth ready, from pole to pole, 
for the discipline of righteous men and the triumph of 
Christian truth. So the individual merchant may think 
only of the luxury of riches, and the politician only of the 



60 



THE SOUL'S CORONATION. 



emoluments of office ; but none the less, under all their 
selfish schemes, live on the everlasting will and sublime 
design of Almighty God. In every wonderful discovery 
of the age, the deepest wonder is the part it is yet to be 
made to play in redeeming the earth from wrong and 
purifying it from sin. The brains that contrive, as well 
as the capital that equips and the governments that 
organize, these forth-putting expeditions which pry into 
all the territory and treasure of the globe, are only ser- 
vants of a vaster Power behind them, — the pages and 
messengers, the waiting-men and operatives, of the Eter- 
nal Providence that will have mankind for his own. The 
end of all this labor and thought is to bring men's souls 
into harmony with God, through their resemblance to 
Christ. One day, as sure as that Saviour's prophecy 
that his kingdom shall come, this human soul shall ap- 
pear in its renewed glory, in a perfected humanity, and 
enter in and take possession of the heritage which 
all this selfish enterprise and this material civilization 
have unconsciously prepared, "building better than they 
knew." 

Meantime what we, humble toilsmen at our several 
obscure posts, need to do to make us faithful servants of 
this reformation, is to take back our eyes from this wide 
prospect, and find out how the same great law — that 
spiritual life deserves more study, effort, and prayer, with 
every one of us, than all external interests — is to be ap- 
plied to our personal convictions ; how the deep saying 
of the Saviour, " The life is more than meat," is to 
be so wrought into our daily habits, that we shall 
feel a spiritual regeneration, a heart thoroughly con- 
secrated to the holiness in Christ, to be our " reasonable 
service." 



THE SOUL'S CORONATION. 



61 



Enter, therefore, into a brief analysis of your own com- 
position ; see if a fair analogy between the general con- 
duct and management of our life in relation to other 
great interests and religion will not hold us to keep our 
spiritual redemption a vital and the foremost concern. 
If you make even a moderate examination of the origi- 
nal contents or faculties of your nature, regarding them 
simply as facts, or in the light of science, you will not 
deny that you presently come upon two capacities, one a 
capacity for distinguishing between right and wrong, or 
a conscience, and the other a capacity for distinguishing 
between man and God, or finite and infinite, that is, 
a capacity for piety. You find these organs in your 
nature : a moral sense, or a capacity for knowing and 
choosing between the right and the wrong ; and a relig- 
ious sense, or a capacity for adoring and worshipping 
God. And if you admit the existence of these capaci- 
ties at all, none of you that is sane will deny that they 
are inherently, and are instinctively felt to be, the highest 
and noblest of all your capacities. One of them implies 
a law of obligation towards men, and supposes unlimited 
measures of justice, charity, and purity, in all the forms 
of a beautiful and blameless morality. The other im- 
plies a law of obligation towards God, and supposes un- 
limited measures of dependence, devout love, and holy 
aspiration in all the sanctities of piety. Observe, I ap- 
peal only to consciousness. I say nothing yet of attain- 
ments ; of use or abuse of these capacities. But if there 
is any person that does not confess to these things as 
simple facts existing in his nature, I do not reach his 
case, and cannot expect his sympathy. 

Given these capacities, then, for Christian duty and 
for prayer, and granting that a certain essential elevation 
6 



62 



THE SOUL'S CORONATION. 



or superiority belongs to them, our next point is, that 
every capacity has connected with it a want, pushing out 
into some expression of desire and an effort for gratifi- 
cation. These wants organize themselves, and work 
towards their several objects systematically. The body 
wants sustenance, — food for its mouth, clothing for its 
exposure, a shelter from the storms and sun. Hence 
agriculture, fisheries, manufactures, and commerce. The 
mind wants knowledge. Hence schools, universities, 
printing-presses, libraries. Taste wants beauty, — not 
only clothing, but handsome clothing, — not only a shel- 
ter, but a house of fair proportions, inviting furniture, 
and pictured walls. Hence the arts of design, dispos- 
ing form and color. The heart wants objects to repose 
in, and affections responsive to its own. Hence mar- 
riage and home. And so, leaving out religion, we have 
society as it is, — the apparatus and furnishings of a civ- 
ilized state. Human wants have found their natural 
expression, and taken shape in institutions. All these 
institutions are vital, and of universal interest, so long 
as the wants that organized them are real wants. 

But why leave out religion ? The capacities and the 
wants for that, we have seen, are planted in human 
nature, as much as the others. Conscience wants an 
upright life ; faith wants worship and communion with 
God ; penitence, aching with remorse, wants a Saviour. 
Hence there must be, to preserve the analogy, a culture 
of these, to keep them alive, to enlarge their power, and 
to gratify them. An institution for that culture will be 
a Church. 

See, now, the conclusions to which the argument thus 
far has conducted us. 1. By our original constitution, by 
the very nature with which we are all alike born, we are 



THE SOUL'S CORONATION. 



63 



just as distinctly required to recognize and worship God 
and obey his commands, as we are required to supply 
our physical necessities, improve our minds, or cherish 
affectionate relations with parents or children, neighbors 
or friends, husband or wife. 2. Christ's Church, which 
is the great nursery and bond of these spiritual obliga- 
tions, has just as clear claims on the personal respect and 
personal membership of every one of you, as business or 
schools or family ; and, in a community like ours, a man 
or woman standing aloof from the consistent and thor- 
ough practice of Christian morality and Christian piety 
ought to be just as singular and anomalous and reproach- 
able an object, as a person that should refuse to learn to 
read, or to get food for his hunger, or to love his kindred. 
3. The instinctive feeling I have alluded to, which I sup- 
pose is common to most of us, that there is a certain su- 
perior nobleness and sacredness belonging to our relig- 
ious emotions, challenges in their behalf a devotion more 
constant, a more cheerful and uniform exercise, than the 
instinct for bodily sustenance, for intellectual cultivation, 
or for domestic joy. " The life is more than meat." 

Are you prepared to bring your individual lives, one 
by one, and compare them with this demand of your 
natures, — this law of your God? Or will you point 
to any error in the reasoning which compels us to the 
result ? 

This, however, does not by any means complete a fair 
representation of the case. I need not feel the least 
hesitation in asking you to admit, that, on independent 
grounds, a Christian life, including both righteousness 
and prayer, brings higher claims to bear on your heart 
than any one, or all, of those other interests to which it 
sustains this analogy. 



64 



THE SOUL 9 S CORONATION. 



In the first place, religion, embracing both its branches, 
is a spirit, and such a spirit, that, while it keeps its own 
province sacred, it is capable of being infused into all 
these other departments and interests of life, helping, 
strengthening, brightening, and blessing every one. Ag- 
riculture and commerce nourish and equip the -body ; but 
while they do it, a spiritual life in the laborers and mer- 
chants, instead of hindering, furthers them. While they 
are busy in the field and the market, Christianity may 
make as beautiful manifestations of itself in their upright 
toil, as in conventicle or council-room. Religion is an in- 
visible angel, standing by them at their posts of daily 
sacrifice, encouraging them. It puts the light of another 
world into their eyes. It puts a manly serenity upon 
their features. It charms away the worst anxieties, com- 
punction, and despair. In a wide reach, and the long trial, 
industry thrives better, and material prosperity is more 
stable, in Christian hands, than in the hands of men who 
love themselves better than God, and will not review 
their weekly weights and measures by the balances of 
the sanctuary. So, in turn, the body is wanted for, and 
serves, the mind and the taste. But religion honors the 
body. The New Testament has the most precise direc- 
tions for its lawful uses and healthful management. 
You remember the Apostle's striking language, asking 
veneration for it as the temple of God. Coming up a 
step higher, the mind and the taste are necessary to fur- 
nish an elevated tone to household experience. But at 
this hour of history, no thinking person need be told, that, 
if religion belongs anywhere, it belongs in the school- 
house and the state-house, in newspapers and books, and 
in the parlor, chambers, and kitchen of a Christian's dwell- 
ing. Conscience and faith go into everything. Higher 



THE SOUL'S CORONATION. 



65 



than all, like fountains in the sky, they send their sweet 
nourishment down into all the ridges and furrows of our 
employments ; they penetrate every pore of humanity ; 
for, like those words of Jesus which give them point and 
power, they are spirit and they are life. They are 
greater, infinitely, than the earthly labors they bless. 
" The life is more than meat." 

Again, the spiritual life asks of you a more intense and 
regular concern than any other interest, because it not 
only penetrates all other interests, but outlives them. It 
is the interest, and the only interest, that cleaves to your 
immortality. Signs are continually appearing across the 
scenery of material activity which foreshadow its decay. 
All that is permanent about these buildings, pursuits, pos- 
sessions, is the influence they leave on character as they 
vanish ; that is fresh as ever, when the world has withered 
and dropped off. The most patent feature in every death- 
chamber is, that it is a final leave-taking between the man 
and his property, — not only his hands, and lungs, and 
feet, but his investments, his business, his relationships to 
the world. You will not wish me to enlarge on reflec- 
tions so familiar as those that distinguish between tran- 
sient goods and the eternity of the soul. The difficulty, 
I suspect, is not that any of us denies this contrast, but 
that we fail to realize it, because in order to realize it we 
need the very faith which it is presented to produce. It 
takes a spiritual vision to see that nothing but what is 
invisible is indestructible. Only truth, love, purity, spir- 
itual affections, and spiritual attainments, survive that 
fire which shall try every man's work, of what sort it is. 
The soul is holier than the scene and the instruments 
amidst which it is trained, because it has an everlasting 
consciousness, responsibility, judgment. " The life is more 

6* 



66 



THE SOUL'S CORONATION. 



than meat," because the one cannot abdicate the august 
birthright of its immortality, and the other sinks into cor- 
ruption by a necessity of its nature. It is not written of 
our reputation, our trade, or our estate, but of our souls, that 
they shall "all stand before the judgment-seat of God." 

Still another and the most impressive of witnesses to 
the superior claims over body, intellect, or friendship of 
the religious nature God has planted in us, is the special 
revelation that has broken through the order of history, 
to put into the world a fresh conviction of the fact. The 
incarnation of Divine Holiness in Christ, — what a mi- 
raculous attestation it is to the transcendent value of the 
spiritual life ! Man had forgotten his Maker. Sin had 
distorted his constitution. Passion had perverted his 
reason. Indulgence had weakened his will. Self-love 
had bewildered his conscience. What went under the 
name of his religion was a ghost of dead ceremonies, 
kept on exhibition by traditions of the Past, — not a liv- 
ing reality, giving a vital communion with a present God. 
The Law had shed its virtue, and gone barren ; and the 
world, when God thus manifested himself for its renova.- 
tion, was only a type of every unrenovated, irreligious 
heart. What has happened for no other department of 
human welfare took place for the lost soul. The media- 
torship of Christ breathed a new vitality into these torpid 
capacities of conscience and faith. By his person and 
his Gospel, by death and resurrection, this Messiah, this 
Immanuel, this Son of God, quickened these slumbering 
powers. God so loved the world. Is not the life, then, — 
the life for which Christ died, — more than meat ? Geth- 
semane, Calvary, the cross, — -they stand for ever, before 
the ages, mighty tokens of the soul's worth. That spec- 
tacle of infinite compassion, changing the face of the 



THE SOUL'S CORONATION. 



67 



world, by first changing the heart of man, is proof enough 
how awful the issue is between spiritual life and spiritual 
death. It restored Religion to its throne, and planted a 
Church for its nurture, against which the gates of hell 
shall not finally prevail. 

The Church, then, in a right understanding of it, — for 
T am not using the word in any technical or theological 
sense, — is at once a divine institution, in that it is the 
perpetuated body of Christ and witness of his redeeming 
power ; and it is also a practical manifestation of what- 
ever spiritual life resides among us. It is the appointed 
means for unfolding and nourishing our capacities for 
morality and for piety. It is a nursery of goodness. It 
is a school for the conscience. It is an oratory for prayer. 
It is the soul's house, collecting, protecting, cherishing, 
multiplying, spiritual life. This is what the Church is 
by intention, — the ideal Church, — the Church of God's 
design. It is an organization for giving practical efficacy 
and triumphant power to the deepest truth we know ; 
namely, that life is more than meat ; the soul too precious 
to be bartered for the world. But come, then, into the 
Church as it is. Come, that is, into the region of men's 
spiritual purposes and doings as they are, — into that de- 
partment of their life which they call religion. What do 
we see ? Life ? interest ? energy ? reality ? Pass in there 
from the streets of travel and the shops of merchandise. 
Is there life before you like the eager, throbbing inten- 
sity of life you leave behind you ? Pass in there from 
the halls of legislation and political debate. Is there in- 
terest in duty and worship like the interest in the prob- 
lems of public economy and the questions of party suc- 
cess ? Pass in there from the school-house and the uni- 
versity. Is there energy spent on forming righteous 



68 



THE SOUL'S CORONATION. 



characters like the energy that beams in the faces and 
animates the ambition of students and their teachers ? 
Pass in there from the joyous groups of kindred in their 
homes. Is there reality like the reality of the love and 
games, the sympathy and talk, the fellowship and fervor, 
of families and wedlock, of parental devotion and filial 
gratitude ? 

Why not ? Is it not a reasonable service ? Where is 
the fallacy in the argument ? What is the falsehood in 
the New Testament ? Was the Saviour mistaken, when 
he declared the supremacy of spiritual interests, — said it 
would be profitable to sell all the world beside for the 
soul, — and bade men seek the kingdom of Heaven and 
its righteousness first ? Were the Apostles exaggerated 
in their zeal ? Is sin a matter of small concern to us, 
when God cannot look upon the slightest stain of it with- 
out abhorrence ? Is spiritual ruin less dreadful to us than 
it was to the immaculate Lord who was crucified to save 
us from it ? Is repentance an indifferent matter, when 
veery prophet Heaven has ever sent has made it the bur- 
den of his message ? Why then do spiritual concerns 
languish and dwindle beside the strong activities of busi- 
ness, the onward march of learning, the vital forces of 
the world ? 

It must be because the lower nature has overborne the 
higher. Conscience and faith are absorbed and quenched 
by appetite and ambition. The carnal life enslaves the 
spiritual. In the noise and pressure of our weekly gain- 
getting and gayety, we lose our perception of the true 
proportions and objects of our being. We exchange our 
immortality for a fortune, our Saviour for pieces of silver, 
and prize, the inmost and eternal life less than the body, 
its raiment and its meat. 



THE SOUL'S CORONATION. 



69 



Here, then, is the inevitable conclusion we are brought 
to, looking straight on from our starting-point. What is 
wanted is to restore the spiritual life to the sovereignty 
God has designed for it; to recrown the soul and make 
it master of the flesh ; to estimate it as God estimates it; 
to seek its regeneration as He did who laid down his life 
for its sake, and declared, that except a man be thus born 
again, he cannot see the kingdom of Heaven. 

What shall reawaken the sleeping heart ? What shall 
restore the alienated estate ? What shall lift men into 
the honor they were designed for, — persuade them that 
to be Christians is nobler than to be capitalists ? What 
shall subordinate comfort to character, exalt the spiritual 
capacities over the fleshly, and give back to the soul its 
lost throne ? 

The question is personal, and not abstract. It is to be 
answered by each for himself, and not by public demon- 
strations, nor any voting in assemblies. We must take 
it home with us into a private meditation. Self-exami- 
nation must furnish the key to it. What shall it profit 
me — is the searching word — if I gain the world and 
lose my soul ? Will that be a reasonable service ? And 
then, remembering the weakness of your best resolves, 
and casting off your pride of will, like the blind man at 
the road-side, lift your arms in patient trust to Christ, 
saying, " Lord, that mine eyes might be opened, that I 
might see these spiritual realities as they are, and appre- 
hend the way whereby thou canst lead me to immortal 
peace." 

There must be personal effort. There must be per- 
sonal energy. There must be watching and prayer. 
There must be a roused, a diligent, an urgent seeking, — 
as much more earnest, profound, systematic, and perse- 



70 



THE SOUL'S CORONATION. 



vering than all our worldly enterprise, as the life is more 
than meat. It is your reasonable service. The king- 
dom of Heaven comes not into any breast by accident, 
by sloth, by unconcern. 

Kiches must begin in the feeling of poverty. And the 
vilest poverty is that of the rich man who fancies he has 
need of nothing. Poor and blind and miserable, the heart 
must feel itself, before it can possess itself of all things by 
reconciliation to God. And man is never so destitute as 
when his outward opulence and comfort mock an empty, 
aching breast. All that is external and material is never 
really possessed, till it is made to serve the soul, which 
is independent of its favors. Learn to look on the splen- 
dor of your physical prosperity as only the fading rai- 
ment of your spiritual substance. Not the garments, not 
the meat, not the skill, nor the pleasure, but the life they 
strengthen and discipline for eternity ! Then, gaining or 
losing, you are rich ; living or dying, you are immortal. 
Believe this : believe in the Christ who revealed and es- 
tablished it. All things are yours the moment you are 
Christ's. That will be the soul's coronation. For to be 
faithful unto the body's death, is to put on the crown of 
an undying life. 



SERMON VI. 



HOMEWARD STEPS. 

FOR YE WERE AS SHEEP GOING ASTRAY ; BUT ARE NOW RE- 
TURNED UNTO THE SHEPHERD AND BISHOP OF YOUR SOULS. 

— 1 Peter ii. 25. 

It is a common habit, both of the popular mind and 
of the pulpit, to look at Christian truth by fragments, 
rather than as a whole. We take it up in its parts, get 
interested in special aspects of it as they are presented 
by passing events or a personal experience, give our 
attention to its duties or its doctrines, one by one, with- 
out special regard to order or system. Even when we 
consider our religion as a practical power, working on 
the heart, turning it from darkness to light, and leading 
it along all the way of change and growth from sin to 
holiness, we are not very apt to bring the whole process 
under our view at once, so as to take in the full sweep 
of that sublime renewal at a single glance. We fail to 
observe the connection of one step with another, marking 
the beautiful continuity and the consistent progress from 
the beginning to the end. 

Such modes of inquiry are to some extent inevitable. 
For, with our narrow reach of vision and our fallible 
reason, when we have proudly compacted our scheme 



72 



HOMEWARD STEPS. 



and adjusted its harmony, the Holy Spirit is very apt to 
show us that his powers for converting the world are 
too large and too free for our comprehension, and that 
his path to the sinning heart transcends our poor contri- 
vances. Besides, the way I spoke of has its advantages. 
A true and vital religion has so much to do with varia- 
ble emotions, is so much a thing of the heart, partakes 
necessarily so much of the ever-shifting nature of life 
itself, that perhaps we treat it as profitably when we 
seize vigorously on the vivid points it presents to our 
faith and practice, one at a time, in the path of Provi- 
dence, as if we stopped in cooler blood to arrange our 
notions into a very formal and rigid system. For it is 
one of the undoubted lessons of history, that what a 
theology gains by the anatomical precision of its frame- 
work, it often loses in life-blood, healthy lungs, and free- 
dom of motion. 

But, on the other hand, there is a positive good to be 
gained by occasionally taking the less familiar course ; 
by laying the whole field under a single rapid survey, 
looking along the complete line of advance, and seeing 
how the soul is conducted on, under its Divine Guide, 
from the far country to its Father's house. To gather 
up, in this way, the principal points of a Christian ex- 
perience, and to present them together in an outline of 
spiritual biography, is what I now propose. Such a 
statement must be in some sense a confession of faith, a 
doctrine of salvation ; only it is presented to you, not in 
the abstract language and forbidding formulas of a scho- 
lastic theology, but in an actual and living history, such 
as may belong to any one of you. So your own heart, 
answering as far as it goes along, will either sanction or 
rectify the representation. 



HOMEWARD STEPS. 



73 



I first sum up these successive stages, through which 
Christ leads his followers, under the several terms that 
represent them, taken in their order. They are the Need, 
the Difficulty, the "Warning, the Relief, the Application 
of the Relief, the Fruit, and the Result. 

1. What is the Need ? It is the need of feeling one's 
self in friendship with God. As respects our religious 
nature and prospects, that is the one radical, universal, 
undermost necessity. If you look deliberately down into 
your own heart, and think, you will find that, provided 
only you could feel confident that you and God were 
agreed, were desiring the same things, were working to- 
wards the same objects, were in a certain divine partner- 
ship, were mutually pledged to one another, and had one 
heart, mind, and will, then you would be perfectly safe 
and happy. You would be at peace. Nothing could 
harm and nothing could greatly terrify you. Let any 
possibility happen, this Almighty Friend would instantly 
come to your rescue. You could bear any sorrow, and 
any pain, and any mortal uncertainty. With that as- 
surance, you would know, that, even if you were to com- 
mit an occasional sin, this perfect Friend, so wise, 
so affectionate, so gracious, would understand, would 
pity, would forgive. Heaven and earth might combine 
against you, temptation and trial, poverty and disease, 
desertion and death, tempest and earthquake, — you know 
you could stand untroubled and secure. Why ? Be- 
cause you are on the side of the Eternal Builder and 
Ruler of all, who will yet bring out order, beauty, sun- 
shine, through the earth and sky. 

This, then, is the soul's one great need. Men have 
different names for it. Ask one, and he will say, " Rec- 
onciliation " ; another, " Harmony with the Infinite " ; an- 

7 



74 



HOMEWARD STEPS. 



other will call it a " Hope," and another a " Faith," and 
another a " New Heart," and another " Religion " in gen- 
eral. Some persons will not allow that they need any- 
such thing. This is only because they have not yet 
looked far enough into themselves to be conscious of 
what they do want, or else their pride will not let them 
confess. It stands to reason, it stands to common sense, 
it stands to Scripture, — no logic and no folly can get 
away from it, — the first want of a created spirit is to be 
on friendly terms with its Creator, child with Father, 
man with God. I say nothing yet of the difficulty of 
reaching that assurance, nor how it is done. But it is 
the want ; and there will be uneasiness, there will be se- 
cret restlessness, there will be inward tossing and trouble, 
till it is had. Friendship, or reconciliation, with God : 
it was what Paul needed, with all his Pharisaic pro- 
priety and excellent education, when he went to Damas- 
cus. It was what Peter and Cornelius, what the jailer 
and Magdalen, what the prodigal son and the fallen 
woman needed. Profligate Augustine with his scholar- 
ship, profane John Newton in his hammock on ship- 
board, the accomplished, blameless Chalmers, needed it ; 
all men, however upright, without piety, and all women 
amiable without consecration, — all among us that have 
it not, — need it. Thousands need it who only know, 
miserably enough, that they need something ; thousands 
more, whom some appetite or vanity is robbing of their 
peace, who are trying desperately to live without it ; un- 
satisfied hearts in this church, empty hearts ail around it, 
and aching hearts over the whole earth, — this is their 
Need. 

2. What is the Difficulty ? The difficulty, of course, 
is having something in us that is opposite to God, some- 



HOMEWARD STEPS. 



75 



thing that does not assimilate with his holiness, some- 
thing that refuses to harmonize with his love, and that 
therefore keeps us apart from him. In other words, the 
difficulty is sin. If there were no sin, our natures would 
stand naturally and constantly in accord with his, because 
he made man, — made man to resemble himself, made 
man after his own likeness and pleasure. Unless, then, 
something had come in to create a separation, we should 
dwell in the bosom of his favor from our birth. 

Drop out, entirely, the question how this sin got in ; 
it is there. The problem of its origin is one with which 
our present practical discussion has no concern. Theo- 
ries on that point are as thick in the Church as withered 
leaves in a forest path in October, and often as dry. 
Two facts are enough : one is, that sin is actually found 
in every one of us, from the moment he wakes to con- 
sciousness, that is, the moment he knows that he exists 
at all ; the other is, that it is to be got rid of, or its bur- 
den is, by personal effort. It is inside of us, an internal 
disease, and not on the surface. It is of the heart, and 
not of the hands and feet. It belongs to character be- 
fore it belongs to conduct, or else it would never serious- 
ly estrange us from God. It is a vitiated state of the 
spiritual system and its circulations. It is bad blood in 
the veins of the soul. Its forms are manifold ; it breaks 
out into avarice, lust, temper, falsehood, slander, vanity, 
selfishness, profanity, — the whole brood of vices, crimes, 
impieties, worldlinesses. But they all have one organic 
root in the heart. They press and goad us, they beset 
us in society and solitude, they follow after and irritate 
and corrupt us. And just so far as they master us, they 
drag us apart from God. Just as far as we yield to them, 
we lose sight of him, and the blessed feeling of friend- 
ship which is our need. The difficulty is sin. 



76 



HOMEWARD STEPS. 



3. What is the Warning? It is the law. That is 
God's voice, telling us when we are out of his friend- 
ship ; in other words, telling us what this sin is. The 
law is what shows us the eternal distinction between 
being on God's side and being against him ; that is, be- 
tween the right and the wrong. How many voices this 
law has ! It speaks from Sinai, from Jerusalem, from the 
Mount of Olives, from Calvary. It speaks from dwell- 
ing-houses among us where passion has darkened every 
window with a curtain of shame ; from the dishonest 
merchant's disgrace ; from the death-scene of the deb- 
auchee ; from the funeral of the early victim of fashion- 
able pleasure. It whispers through our secret fears of 
punishment ; it makes a dramatic exhibition in our trem- 
bling nerves ; it turns our sick-bed into a pulpit ; it sends 
those shrieks that are rather felt than heard through the 
soul's remorse. Wherever law is violated, there law is 
reproclaimed. The Bible is its prolonged and solemn 
cry. It is written out all over the world. Sun and 
darkness are its light and shade. In every man and 
woman and child it finds some hearing, because it finds 
a conscience. If we ever start the treacherous inquiry 
whether we cannot be friends with God, and get the ben- 
efits of his favor, without renouncing our sin, — whether 
we cannot be one with him without giving up what is 
opposite and hateful to him, — this law rebukes our pre- 
sumption. It is our warning. It never temporizes nor 
parleys. It offers no compromise and no postponement. 
It requires perfect obedience, immaculate purity, unde- 
viating justice. There is no provision in it for anything 
but penalty and suffering upon the violator. It is clear 
as the sunbeam, sure as gravitation, terribly sincere. 
" This do, and thou shalt live." « Do that, and die." 



HOMEWARD STEPS. 



77 



Another attribute of law, making it yet more intensely 
a warning, is that it constantly keeps in advance of our 
performance, and yet condemns us for not keeping up 
with it. With the august and awful splendor of its pu- 
rity, it frowns upon our pollution, shames our incon- 
sistencies, threatens our guilt. The farther we go in 
complying with its demands, the keener our sense of its 
perfection grows ; the higher the standard rises, the 
clearer the command sounds, and the more hopeless our 
self-disgust and our agony become. There is no satis- 
faction there. Just in proportion as we come consciously 
under law, and laiv alone, we are wretched. It is warn- 
ing, and nothing but warning. Paul's wondrous spirit- 
ual insight saw that ; and so he says, in his energetic 
phrase, that sin comes by the law ; the strength of sin 
is the law ; when the commandment came, sin revived. 
That is, by the law, the rule of right, comes a knowledge 
of transgression. No law, no violation of law, — and so 
no accusing conscience. And the more law, that is, the 
more clearly you see the command, the more sin. This 
is logical ; and it is experimental. When you have fath- 
omed the spiritual argument in the first eight chapters 
to the Romans, you have learned the profoundest lesson 
of personal and practical wisdom you are likely to find 
in the present life. The difficulty with our prevailing 
style of religion lies precisely here. We are legalists, 
and not children of grace ; we are Jews, and not Chris- 
tians ; in fact, though not in form, we take after Moses, 
and not Jesus. We think to be saved simply by per- 
formances, by moral regularity, by following a rule of 
decency, by correct habits, by a respectable deportment. 
And certainly we must try with all our might to keep the 
law, or else we are not fit for grace, and have no promise 
7* 



78 



HOMEWARD STEPS, 



of forgiveness. But unless we have something beyond 
and after law, it is plain we are only warned. 

4. With such a Need, such a Difficulty, and such a 
Warning, it is not strange that we look for a Relief. 
What is that Relief ? What must it be, by the very con- 
ditions of the case ? In the first place, whatever it is, it 
must come forth out of God himself. The offended one 
must forgive. The harmony our sin has destroyed can- 
not be restored by the act of one party. Reconciliation 
can come only from the Infinite and Unchangeable Will 
restoring us, mercy and justice both being kept inviolate. 
Then the Relief must be a living person. No dead ex- 
piation, nor mercantile bargain, can heal that deadly and 
moral alienation. There must be personal affections, 
personal influence, personal mediation. It must be a 
person like us, as well as from God, — of human sensi- 
bility, as well as of divine authority and power. All 
the plenitude of God's wisdom and truth and love must 
be there, and all the sacrifice and suffering and temp- 
tation of humanity. There must be a perfect life, re- 
vealing and incarnating the divine. There must be a 
death, melting, moving, redeeming, by a transcendent 
sacrifice. You turn from the image in the mind to the 
historic reality, and behold ! Jesus of Nazareth. He is 
the relief. You listen, and a voice out of heaven, over 
his head, " This is my beloved Son ; whoso believeth 
in him shall not perish, but have eternal life." You 
listen again, and a voice at his side, " Behold the Lamb 
of God that taketh away the sin of the world." You 
listen again, and in his own voice, " Come unto me " ; 
" The Son quickeneth whom he will " ; " Whosoever- liv- 
eth and believeth in me shall never die " ; " All that the 
Father hath are mine." Here is an answer to the Need. 



HOMEWARD STEPS. 



79 



Here is a way out of the Difficulty. Here is peace after 
the Warning. The words spoken are the Father's words. 
For reconciliation he is the Reconciler. To save sinners 
this Saviour came into the world. To satisfy, and 
supersede, and fulfil the Law, he brings a living Gos- 
pel. The Spirit of the Lord is upon him, because he 
preaches that Gospel to the poor, and opens prison-doors, 
and lets in light upon dungeons, and unfastens chains, 
and anoints the fretted limbs. And this Saviour is not 
only making intercession for his Church to-day, in the 
heavens, being ascended into that glory which he had 
with the Father before the world was, but he is literally 
and personally present in the midst of his Church, fulfil- 
ling his own promise, the life of every believer's heart ; 
not a dead Christ, but a living ; not a departed Re- 
deemer, but keeping personal relations with his own 
who love him. What infinite inspiration in that faith ! 
In the great conflict, where victory is immortal life, our 
Leader watches us. 

There is a touching fact related in history of a High- 
land chief, of the noble house of M'Gregor, who fell 
wounded at the battle of Preston Pans. Seeing their 
chief fall, it is said, the clan wavered, and gave the 
enemy an advantage. The old chieftain, beholding this, 
raised himself up on his elbow, while the blood gushed 
in streams from his wounds, and cried aloud : " I am 
not dead, my children ; I am looking at you to see you 
do your duty." These words revived the sinking cour- 
age of his brave Highlanders. " There was a charm in 
the fact that they still fought under the eye of their chief. 
It roused them to put forth their mightiest energies, and 
they did all that human strength could do, to stem and 
turn the dreadful tide of battle. 



80 



HOMEWARD STEPS. 



Now they do it to win a corruptible crown, but we an 
incorruptible. When our strength falters, or confidence 
wavers, the Prince of Peace, with no vengeance but love 
only in his voice, says to us also : " I am not dead, my 
children, though my blood has once been shed for you. 
Lo ! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the 
world." Law is melted in love. Instead of command- 
ments graved on tables of stone, we have a cross whose 
blood is mercy. We are no longer under law, but grace. 
Christ is the Relief, our Redeemer. 

5. What is the Application of this Relief ? I ask again, 
How does a child " apply " his mother's love ? He opens 
his heart and lets the blessed influence stream in. How 
does the young man, struggling with a hard fortune, in a 
crowd of strangers, " apply " the good-will of the gener- 
ous benefactor who offers him sympathy and counsel 
and credit ? He stretches out his confidence, and wel- 
comes the timely friendship that saves him. These are 
fan illustrations. All our spiritual affections are under 
one law. If we would have the benefits of Christ's di- 
vine mediation and ministry cleave to our hearts, and 
regenerate our natures, and build us up into strong and 
noble and beautiful characters, we must, first of all, 
throw open our breasts to him. We must believe on him. 
We must trust in him. We must drop our doubts of 
his own promises. The grand condition of being saved 
is, after all, simple willingness to be saved. We have 
not to go after a Saviour, nor to invent one by our in- 
genuity, nor to purchase one by our performances, nor to 
propitiate one by persuasion, but simply to receive one 
who waits, to unbar the heart's door where he stands 
even now and knocks, to let him freely in. 



HOMEWARD STEPS. 



81 



" Let not justice make you linger, 
Nor of fitness idly dream ; 
All the fitness he requireth 
Is to feel your, need of him." 

We must sit at his feet, not to criticise his claims, but 
to listen ; not to speculate, but to be renewed ; not to 
use the scale and dividers of a metaphysic or dogmatic 
scheme upon him, but to adore the blessed mystery, to 
drink in his spirit, to catch the heavenly sympathy of his 
love, to yield ourselves up to his inspiring and moulding 
touch, to bend the knee, and lay our heads in his bosom, 
and so be ready to rise up daily to do his work, and press 
on after him into his kingdom. That is, the application 
of the Relief is Faith. Again and again the Apostle said, 
" Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be 
saved." Believe, that is, not with the brain, but with the 
heart, — with that kind of faith in which love is a larger 
element than intellect, and trust is more than assent. 
This is the faith that completes the whole work of regen- 
eration. It carries penitence deeper down among the 
springs of feeling. It heightens the blush of shame at 
living a selfish and worldly life, because it is so alien to 
the disinterested and devout temper of the Master. It 
makes the new life a reality, because it founds it in the 
deepest motives. It changes the whole inner man. It 
works by love. It enters the invisible, and dwells in the 
secret tabernacle of a most holy joy. 

And so it is commonly found that the beginning of a 
real and right religious life is a penitent and humble 
renunciation of self, — self-will, self-confidence, self-guid- 
ance, self-love. Only he that thus humbleth himself 
shall be exalted. Before we can lay hold on the Mas- 
ter's hand, we must let go money, dress, wine-cups, 
worldly honors. Before we are lifted up, we must be 



82 



HOMEWARD STEPS. 



cast down. A young artist at Rome went down into the 
vast, dark Catacombs alone, to copy some of the designs 
on the tablets of the sepulchres. After he had groped 
his way through many intricate and winding passages, 
led on by the fascination of his discoveries, suddenly his 
lamp went out. Not a ray of light penetrated those sub- 
terranean acres. It was the blackness of darkness. In 
increasing terror, he felt his stumbling way among the 
labyrinths of tombs and dead men's bones, not knowing 
whether he was nearing the outlet or receding from it. 
At last, faint with effort, choked with dust, and in an ag- 
ony of despair, he gave up all reliance, and fell prostrate 
to the ground to die. But as he fell, his hand acciden- 
tally grasped the thread which had been placed as a clew 
to the pilgrim ; hope revived ; and he regained the open 
air and the day. How often it happens, that some dis- 
tress or misfortune, some nearness to the tomb almost as 
literal as his, must create in us the feeling of utter help- 
lessness first, before we are ready to lean with faith on 
our Guide. When we renounce ourselves, we seize the 
clew ; and then we rise, in the energy of a new-born and 
confident hope, and work steadfastly on into the light. 

6. What is the Fruit ? It is righteousness. Infalli- 
bly and invariably, it is righteousness. If that fruit does 
not grow, some one of the previous links in the line of 
causes has been left out. The penitence was not sin- 
cere. The reform was not true. The faith was not gen- 
uine. By their fruits ye shall know them. Not right- 
eousness always in one style of its manifestations. It 
may be in a tradesman's bargains, or a mechanic's jobs ; 
in a scholar's simplicity, or a clerk's fidelity. It may be 
in a forbearing disposition, where there are daily provoca- 
tions ; it may be in magnanimity toward a mean com- 



HOMEWARD STEPS. 



83 



petitor ; it may be on a couch of slow and patient suffer- 
ing, where needed energies are crippled, and a dependent 
family are left unprovided for. But it is none the less 
righteousness in one case than the other, — as dear to 
God, as resplendent to the spiritual eyesight of angels. 
It has equally glorious exhibitions in the statesman that 
carries an incorrupt breast through the lobbies of a state- 
house or through the bribes of the capitol, and in the 
woman that sways with patient justice the perplexing 
politics of the nursery, or is daring enough to resist the 
tyranny of fashion. It is in the politician that refuses to 
mortgage his conscience to the Devil, and in the freeman 
that cannot be hired by office, nor persuaded by sophis- 
try, to make his brother-man a slave. It is in the preach- 
ers that reverence their message more than their salaries, 
and in parishes that keep a soul as well as a sanctuary. 
The lustre of a saintly heart needs no artificial reflectors 
to enhance its glory. It is splendid by its own original 
radiance. That panoply of sacred principle that lets no 
arrow of the adversary through any joint of its harness 
is the Christian's every-day garment. Every Christian 
cause is stronger for his hand and his tongue. No 
tempter is cunning enough to wring a scandal from his 
behavior. No neighbor shall hesitate on which side, in 
the grand division of the world, to reckon him. He is 
committed frankly. He is pledged irrevocably. He is 
consecrated manfully. If he is Christ's man, there is no 
situation, nor turn, nor emergency, where Christ is not 
honored in his life. And that because the Master's spirit 
is in him. 

Christianity patronizes no system of half-education. 
It asks a form of manhood embodying every natural idea 
that philosophy has propounded, genius represented, or 



84 



HOMEWARD STEPS. 



history disciplined. It is no ally of a stationary intelli- 
gence, nor of a sluggish will, nor of a timid heart. 
Growth is its law, — growth in wisdom and growth in 
love. It is not satisfied, therefore, with conversion, but 
is quite as exacting of sanctifi cation, bidding the convert 
forget the elements and go on to perfection. Christian- 
ity wants to build after the pattern of a divine beauty, a 
symmetry without blemish, and a wholeness without de- 
fect. It is itself incarnated in a living example of that 
completeness. It has a welcome for every contribution of 
science, only requiring that science shall remember its 
ministerial office, not exalting its telescopes and crucibles 
into an apparatus of will-worship, displacing depend- 
ence and redemption. It has nothing but contempt for 
that complacent, Pharisaic style of piety, which fancies 
its only needed work is done when it has just grazed the 
gates of hell by sliding into a lazy church ; which identifies 
entering the ark of the covenant with escaping from the 
vineyards of brave toil, and goes shuffling and dozing 
through a life that vibrates between formalities on Sun- 
day and intense vitalities all the week, — alive in the 
shop and caucus, but asleep at church ; — character all 
the while rotting away under those obscene inconsisten- 
cies, a cowardly conscience and a voluble confession, — a 
brain boiling with the plots of politics or the bargains of 
trade, and a heart hard as the nether millstone to all the 
sufferings of humanity ; — a prayeiiess life, or else a life- 
less prayer. 

The Need does not tend more directly to the Difficulty ; 
sin is not more certainly assailed by the Warning ; the 
Law does not more naturally waken the longing for the 
Relief; Christ does not more gladly enter in where faith 
applies for him, than faith itself acts its noble energy 



HOMEWARD STEPS. 



85 



forth into righteousness, works by love, bears the Fruit of 
philanthropy, integrity, patience, temperance, emancipa- 
tion, brotherly-kindness, charity. 

7. What is the Result ? Let the noble and animating 
words of Paul answer : " But now, being made free from 
sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto 
holiness, and the end, everlasting life." Everlasting 
life is the result. The soul has reached its period of vic- 
tory. From the far country, through these seven stages, 
it has travelled back, till it has come home, — home, — 
O word of unspeakable and unexhausted meaning! The 
door of the Father's house was open, and it has entered 
in. To hear that sentence of forgiving welcome, — as 
if all the sighs of a parent's anxious and agonized af- 
fection were suddenly melted into one musical and joy- 
ous anthem of thanksgiving, — " This my son was dead, 
and is alive again ; he was lost, and is found," — to hear 
that from the Father's lips is heaven enough. After 
conflict, there is peace. Now is " the rest that remaineth 
for the people of God." This is life eternal. Hence- 
forth, there shall be labor, indeed, because labor is the 
best satisfaction of a spiritual being. There shall be trial, 
because only by trial come strength and progress, which 
are the very honors of our immortality. But it shall be 
labor no longer outside the kingdom of Heaven. It is 
labor in the Master's society, labor under the encour- 
agements of his friendship, labor with the crown on the 
head, and the seal in the forehead, and the reconciliation 
in the heart. Faithful continuance in well-doing, not for 
the sake of the reward, but for the brave relish of fidel- 
ity's own sake, has brought the disciple to his Lord ; and 
w T hen he looks up, behold ! glory and honor and immor- 
tality are the spiritual trophies that adorn his dwelling. 

8 



86 



HOMEWARD STEPS. 



Thus falls the sweet benediction of the Apostle : " Ye 
were as sheep going astray ; but are now returned unto 
the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls." Have I drawn, 
with any traces of truth, the homeward steps of a human 
soul, — its need of reconciliation, its difficulty in its in- 
ward sin, its warning from a law so unbending and so pure 
as to be dreadful, its divine deliverance in the appointed 
Reconciler, its reception of his inspiring and renewing and 
redeeming spirit by a penitent and lowly faith, its fruit in 
a humane and holy life, its end in its salvation ? 

Homeward steps : without these can we ever see our 
home ? Is there any encouragement, anywhere, to think 
we can have an answer to the momentary impulse which 
sometimes says, " Let me die the death of the righteous ! " 
if we have not tried to live the life of the righteous ? 
When Stephen, first of martyrs, falling braised and 
bloody under the stones hurled by Jewish bigotry, ex- 
claimed in rapture, " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit ! " w r as 
the image of his Lord an unfamiliar vision, or the thought, 
of meeting him a new suggestion ? The last words of 
the mother of John Wesley to her family were, " Chil- 
dren, as soon as I am released, sing a psalm of praise to 
God " ; could that be the farewell of a spirit to which 
psalms of praise were strange before ? Could any tongue 
not familiar with the language of Christian hope say 
what Philip Doddridge said : " Let me be thankful that, 
though God loves my departed child too well to permit 
it to return to me, he will, erelong, bring me to my 
child ? " As Owen, the author of the " Meditations on 
the Glory of Christ," lay dying, he said to a brother-be- 
liever, " The long-wished-for day has come at last, when 
I shall see that glory in another manner than I have ever 
done or was capable of doing in this world." Does that 



HOMEWARD STEPS. 



87 



sound like the speech of a faith extemporized for the oc- 
casion ? Margaret Wilson, " a young martyr of eigh- 
teen," in the reign of James II., fastened by her persecu- 
tors to a stake in the bay at low water, to be drowned by 
the rising tide, repeated in a clear, full voice the twenty- 
third Psalm, and then, as the water choked her, added, 
after Stephen, " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Could 
that tone of triumph have sounded over the waves, if the 
steadfastness of a long and patient confession had not 
inspired her lips ? 

In some one of these seven stages of spiritual pilgrim- 
age every soul among us is found to-day; for beneath 
alienation from God there is no lower depravity, and 
above^eternal life and love there is no more perfect holi- 
ness or joy. Which one of us shall be too cowardly or 
too careless to bring the wholesome questions personally 
home : At which point am I ? Which way do my steps 
tend ? Is my journey towards the far country, or towards 
my Father's house ? Or do I stand weak, irresolute, and 
despicable, looking now this way, and now that, halting 
between husks with the swine, and the honors of glory 
everlasting ? Shall I go farther astray, or shall I return, 
a grateful penitent, to the Shepherd and Bishop of souls ? 



SEEMON VII. 



HOLINESS TO THE LOED. 

AND THOU SHALT MAKE A PLATE OF PURE GOLD, AND GRAVE 
UPON IT, LIKE THE ENGRAVINGS OF A SIGNET, HOLINESS TO THE 

lord. — Exod. xxviii. 36. 

First, an examination of the word Holiness, and its 
meaning; then the question, how holiness, the spirit- 
ual element in character, is gained, — or what is the law 
of its growth ; and thirdly, the question where it is to be 
exercised, — or what is the law of its manifestation. 

How much meaning, after all our abuses of it, clings 
to one of these old biblical words ! We pervert it, we 
make false applications of it, we mix it in with the de- 
ceptions of our current speech, we let it slip into our 
practice of that terrible social dishonesty which makes so 
much of our fashionable conversation what an observing 
satirist once described all language to be, — a contrivance 
for concealing our thoughts ; and yet, in spite of so many 
frauds and forgeries upon it, we never wholly sift out the 
original value. And there are some words which are 
slower to be vulgarized by these familiarities than others, 
retaining an awfulness which forbids their desecration, 
almost like a sanctuary, or a mother's Bible, or a dead 
child's memory. One of these words is holiness. That 



HOLINESS TO THE LORD. 



89 



term carries with it a strict and solitary individuality. 
Let us keep it, the more reverently and affectionately, 
for that reason. If any unnatural and artificial associa- 
tions have crept up about it, by formal usage, let us take 
it back out of the vocabulary of cant, into the property of 
common sense. If it sounds somewhat vague and in- 
definite, let us try to fix upon it an exacter definition. It 
has a signification altogether its own. We are not likely 
to hear it where its real sense is wholly out of the speak- 
er's thoughts. Indeed, it is rather remarkable how many 
men's lips there are that never can speak it. "What spe- 
cial and sacred grandeur lingers in it, appealing to a fine 
instinct even in very thoughtless minds, forbidding them 
to pronounce it ? We all know some men and women 
by whom it would startle us to hear this word holiness 
deliberately uttered, and who would themselves find a 
kind of embarrassment in forcing it from their lips. Is 
this because there is a certain spiritual quality suggested 
by it which is foreign from their characters, and a shade 
of religious conviction, to which nothing in their habit of 
life and feeling answers ? 

Preparatory to a fresh appreciation of the power and 
the beauty of holiness, we certainly want a clear under- 
standing of the thing. 

Holiness, then, in the first place, is not to be confounded 
with virtue. Nor is any disparagement cast upon virtue 
by affirming this distinction. They are names of two 
things, not one and the same. They do not express the 
same quality in character. They rest on different capa- 
cities in human nature, — virtue on the conscience, holi- 
ness on faith. They are fed from different fountains, — 
virtue from moral principle, holiness from communion 
with God in Christ. They may be guided by different 

8* 



90 



HOLINESS TO THE LORD. 



directors ; virtue depending more on self-will, as is inti- 
mated in the classical origin of the word, where it ex- 
pressed the special characteristic of the Roman mind, 
which was a certain honorable, proud high-mindedness, 
but Pagan and not Christian, and where it was nearly 
synonymous with valor, or such fidelity as depends on 
personal courage. Holiness, on the other hand, implies 
a subjection of self-will, and the presence of those spirit- 
ual attributes, like humility, forgiveness, and religious 
submission, which are peculiar to Christianity. Holiness 
requires virtue, as one of its ingredients ; no man can be 
holy without being virtuous. But virtue, on the contrary, 
is often found, temporarily and in individuals, dissociated 
from holiness ; an ordinary congregation embraces two 
or three times as many virtuous hearts as holy ones. 
You can mark this distinction among professions not 
theological. Wherever an individual comes whose life 
is under the influence of daily communion with his God, 
you feel that there is a signet on his character, differing 
from that of the best man whose conduct acknowledges 
no higher principle than a correct morality ; and most of 
us, I presume, would readily agree that the former charac- 
ter is of the nobler stamp. Before his conversion, there is 
no evidence that Paul was not rigidly, even Pharisaically, 
virtuous. But he did not ascend into the purer dignity 
of holiness, till the voice and the light from heaven un- 
sealed his spiritual eyesight, and converted him to Christ. 
His conscience was scrupulous, but not sanctified, and so 
it let him persecute and hate Christians. Simon Magus, 
for anything that appears to the contrary, may have been 
a virtuous citizen of Samaria ; yet he thought the gift of 
the Holy Spirit could be purchased with money, and had 
to learn from Peter that he needed repentance and 



HOLINESS TO THE LORD. 



91 



prayers for forgiveness before he could have part or lot 
in holiness, because his heart was not right in the 
sight of God. This, I suppose, was the distinction in 
the Apostle's mind, when he said that for a righteous, 
correct, or virtuous man, one would scarcely volunteer to 
die; while for a good or holy man, — so much more 
impressive and affecting is that type of character, — some 
would even dare to die. Holiness to the Lord is not 
complacency towards men. 

Do not suspect me of exalting Paul at the expense of 
James, — nor of pleading for religion by the poor trick 
of undervaluing morality. I think Christ's Church will 
never return to that error. What I claim for the spirit- 
ual principle is that it is the natural root, and in a wide 
reach, and the long run, the only infallible supporter, 
of the moral principle. If I wanted to convert a pagan 
people to virtue, I would first try to rouse in them some 
vital sense of God. And in behalf of that method, I 
would be as willing to pledge philosophy as the Gospel. 
As fast as our nominal Christendom loses its hold on 
God, by faith, it is preparing the final downfall of its 
good morals. Holiness is the essential root. Virtue is 
the essential fruit. 

The same discrimination ought to be made, only 
more sharply, between all those negative epithets where- 
by we describe persons that avoid trespasses against the 
conventional rules of honesty, or against the common 
canons of respectability, on one side, and holiness on the 
other. It is an offence against the Eternal Spirit, to con- 
found these mixtures of prudence, self-esteem, worldly 
sagacity, natural benevolence, or refined Epicureanism, 
or even moral innocence, with that spiritual affection 
which is as real and as positive and as practical as any 



92 



HOLINESS TO THE LORD. 



of them, diviner than any, and which comes only by de- 
vout communion with the spirit God gives through his 
Son, creating a new life. "We ought not to be long in 
learning that it is a very insufficient tribute we pay to 
the finished life of a companion, when we can only say 
over his grave, that he paid his debts, provided well for 
his family, and escaped disgrace. If we lived in a com- 
munity of Calmuc Tartars, or had received our notions 
of character under Arabs and brigands, this would be a 
legitimate title to distinction. But what an equivocal 
comment on all our Christian civilization, if by this time 
it has only educated us up to the point of eulogizing, as 
signal examples of a right life, men that have not cheat- 
ed, nor robbed, nor broken their marriage vows, nor 
abused their lips by lying and profanity ! Brethren, 
Providence has called us children of a purer light. It 
becomes us to be awake to it. Our funeral honors, and 
our admirations of the living, ought to be graduated by 
a stricter scale. A nation that has been toning over the 
leaves of the New Testament, writing commentaries, 
establishing Sunday schools, organizing Bible societies, 
supporting churches, for two hundred years and more, 
with no religious disabilities to compromise its progress, 
ought to have marched beyond the childishness of rating 
its saints by the standard of social decency, and of canon- 
izing honesty. Honesty is no mean thing, and not too 
common ; but because the rudiments of Christian charac- 
ter are noble, is that a reason why we should linger in 
the rudiments for ever, and not press forward, perfecting 
holiness in the fear of God ? " These ought ye to have 
done, and not to leave the other undone." The whole aim 
of Christ's teachings is to carry up the purposes and lives 
of his disciples, above the legal virtue of Jews and Phar- 



HOLINESS TO THE LORD. 



93 



isees, to that spiritual purity which is the express product 
of repentance, prayer, and faith. " God hath called us to 
holiness." 

Holiness, then, is that attribute which is the very 
crown of all the culture of humanity ; for it carries the 
soul up nearest to the everlasting Fountain of wisdom, 
power, goodness, from which it came. It enters in only 
where repentance opens the way, and spiritual renewal 
puts the heart into wholesome relations with the Divine 
will. It is the peculiar gift for which the world stands 
indebted to revelation, and it is multiplied just in pro- 
portion as the heart is formed into the likeness of Christ's. 
It is the summit of manhood, but no less the grace of 
God. It is achieved by effort, because your free-will 
must use the means that secure it ; and it is equally the 
benignant inspiration of that Father who hears every 
patient petition. It belongs to that statesman, and only 
that one, who worships in his closet before he ascends 
the tribunal, and who feels the hall of legislation, as 
often as he enters it, to be a fore-court of the heavenly 
audience-chamber, whose foundations are justice and 
judgment ; it belongs to that magistrate, and only that 
one, who is made fit to govern or to judge by personal 
consecration to the Master, who will reckon for his stew- 
ardship by immaculate statutes ; to that merchant, and 
only that one, who holds a daily commerce with the Al- 
mighty Author of just balances and the Avenger of wrong, 
and whose trading-house, with its least transactions, lies 
consciously open to the inspection of the undeceived 
Accountant ; to that laborer, and only that one, who 
labors for the meat that perisheth with less zeal than 
for that which endureth unto everlasting life ; to that 
woman, and only to her, whose morning devotions dedi- 



94 



HOLINESS TO THE LORD. 



cate the house she keeps as a domestic temple, and who, 
remembering that favor is deceitful and beauty vain, 
prizes no favor like His who was the friend of Mary and 
Martha, nor any beauty like the beauty of holiness. 

My second inquiry asks how holiness, the spiritual 
element in character, is gained. Not by enchantments. 
Not by mystical openings that pour it into the passive 
soul, as summer showers fill lifeless cisterns. Not by 
constitutional predispositions ; for it fits every organi- 
zation, and is impartially designed for every experience. 
Not by strange, anomalous, interior spasms, that set 
aside all the regular action of our powers, and jerk the 
heart into conversion hysterically. It is as much con- 
formed to regular methods as any accomplishment or 
enterprise in the world. It is as beautifully reducible to 
order and fixed conditions, as the mastery of a science 
or the planting of a colony. Holiness is subject to Law, 
both in its birth and its growth. 

And the first principle of that spiritual economy is 
this : it must be taken up as an express, specific work. 
Holiness, I say, — nay, God says, — must be a special 
object. It is very essential, as the progress of the subject 
will remind us presently, to diffuse it, when we have it, 
into all parts of our life ; but the first purpose is to get it, 
to know what it is that we may get it, and not so to mix 
it confusedly with mere proprieties of behavior and amia- 
bilities of temper, that we shall imagine we have kept all 
that holy law which is exceeding broad when we have 
only washed the outside of our conventional cups and 
platters, or swept up and down the aisles of a church 
covered with invisible phylacteries, — phylacteries which 
will some day show, under hotter trial, just as the fire 
brings out the characters of an invisible ink. The young 



HOLINESS TO THE LORD. 



95 



man who has not begun to take into special and particu- 
lar concern the discipline of his character into holiness, 
has left out the chief element in his being, and has laid 
his plans for living, forgetting his inmost life. Holiness 
presents that side of us which joins on upon eternity, 
opens into heaven, and makes us kindred to God. It 
is not to be had without an aim, a purpose, a steady 
looking and striving to that end. It never was obtained 
by a few desultory snatches of sober reflection, hastily 
dismissed, — a few vague impressions, in churches or 
cemeteries, — a few intermittent demonstrations in the 
way of a charity collection, after-dinner good-nature, or 
summer-evening philosophy. It must be treated like an 
interest, a pursuit, a profession. It is the great livelihood 
of your heart. It is the vocation of your soul. It is the 
practical handicraft of your inner man. It must be be- 
gun, followed, and never ended. Resolve, deliberation, 
continuous effort, are its motor powers. All your mem- 
bers are its flexile instruments. The Bible is its text- 
book. Morning, evening, noon, all the circling hours, 
are its periods of exercise. Prayer is its rehearsal. God 
answering is its Teacher. Christ is its Pattern. Spe- 
cial, express, intentional, must the striving after holiness 
be, in order to secure it, like every glorious consumma- 
tion in the world's history, like every solid triumph in 
individual advancement. 

And then this crowning grace and central strength of 
character must be sought by a direct process. Astron- 
omy is not learned by probing down among the soils 
and rocks of the planet we occupy. Chemistry is not 
mastered by studying trigonometry. Painting is not 
learned by handling a chisel. Men aspiring to excel- 
lence in mechanics do not go to sea ; nor do sailors take 



96 



HOLINESS TO THE LORD. 



their apprenticeship in a smithery. Yet there seems to be 
a common conceit, that, by hard following after all man- 
ner of material success and welfare, the spiritual nature 
in us will grow strong and beautiful. Now, for spiritual 
attainments there are spiritual faculties ; just as for me- 
chanical attainments there are mechanical faculties, and 
for success in acquisition, acquisitive faculties. Nothing 
need be said of then rank ; for if you admit their exist- 
ence at all, you must grant then supremacy. But they 
are to be waked and opened. They await nurture and 
expansion. Do not come to the recognition and train- 
ing of them by any sidelong indirection, nor imagine 
it impossible. Do not suppose your love of God will 
grow, because you are faithful to your counting-room. 
Do not think your feeble reverence for the Everlasting 
Right and Good will strengthen, because you excel in 
your art, or take a premium for mechanism or horticulture, 
or foresee next month's market. Do not hope for the 
peace unspeakable which passeth knowledge and dwells 
in the meek and contrite spirit, by merely dealing about 
as fairly as your neighbors, and paying what the law 
says you owe. Rise to loftier designs. Remember, 
spiritual things are spiritually discerned. Answers to 
prayer cannot be had without being prayed for. Faith 
will not increase, unless you provide for faith's exercise. 
You will not enter into fellowship with Christ Jesus, 
except you seek his society. You will not behold the 
kingdom of Heaven, unless you direct your eye, and 
fix it there. And it is the universal maxim of all manly 
and candid seeking, to go straight to the very object 
you would gain. By the same rule only is the new man 
created in holiness. 

Still another means of forming this highest grace 



HOLINESS TO THE LORD. 



97 



upon character, is to place ourselves in contact with the 
providential instruments that foster it, — those divine 
helps that favor it. It was on the high-priest's front- 
let, — the plate of pure gold before his mitre, surmount- 
ing all his holy garments, the splendid investiture of his 
office, the robe and ephod, the girdle, the Urim and 
Thummim, the onyx-stones whereon the names of the 
twelve tribes were written, — it was over all these, that 
the august inscription was graven, like the engravings of 
a signet, Holiness to the Lord. According to that Le- 
vitic ritual, the priest passing away prefigured the ever 
living Messiah, and the furniture of his sacerdotal function 
symbolized the simpler and grander forms of the Chris- 
tian Church. For every peculiar organized work there 
is wanted a system of means. Culture implies a cultus ; 
education, a school ; agriculture, a seed-time and harvest, 
as well as a soil and sun ; chemistry, a laboratory ; lit- 
erature, a library ; moral experience, a moral discipline. 
So the spiritual life wants certain appointments, ordi- 
nances, to be the outlines of an institution where it shall 
get nurture. God has not mocked the soul with a false 
aspiration. As we have our being under the two grand 
external conditions of time and space, he has carved a 
monument and a treasury out of each, for the replenish- 
ing of our fidelity ; a holy day, and a holy place, through 
which the Holy Spirit may multiply holiness in us. A 
supernatural philosophy, adapting the framework of our 
worship to our worshipping necessities! The Church, 
with its simple ceremonies, its Sabbath and Sanctuary, 
its Baptism and Communion, meeting the soul's unper- 
verted wants, is the house built for the new man, as con- 
venient and genial to his regenerate life as the dwelling 
that welcomes the new-born child, and shelters the natu- 



98 



HOLINESS TO THE LORD. 



ral one. These venerable, permanent ordinances are like 
fixed channels, through which our Lord has poured his 
selectest influences down the field of the world. If we, 
workers in the vineyard, would receive the gift, drink of 
that water of life which slakes the immortal thirst, we 
must come where the channel runs, reach out our hand 
to the stream, touch and taste at the brink. Specific 
means for a specific result. The Church organizes our 
spiritual life, drills its desultory habits, systematizes 
its irregular impulses, turns it into peace, order, effi- 
ciency. Without conscious vitality in themselves, its 
observances act through laws of association and impres- 
sion wrought into the fibre of our being, so as to enkindle 
that life in the believer. Their influence depends on 
two things, — a cordial, receptive heart, and a faithful use. 
Nothing in themselves, they are clothed with power by 
the spiritual reaction they stimulate in our souls. Holi- 
ness is of the spirit ; but these are God's way, and suited 
to our constitution, of making the spirit holier. 

I have mentioned a thud question, lying in the path 
of my subject : — "Where is this Holiness to be exer- 
cised ? The fountain being replenished by the pouring 
out of the Holy Spirit, in answer to our seekings and 
our struggles, Christ's holiness is to be reproduced in us, 
and sent forth again to bless the world. And so there is 
a law of its manifestation. Indeed, the exercise or prac- 
tice of holiness, as I have intimated, is a chief means of 
its reduplication. To use what we possess is the surest 
way of being enriched with more ; for unto him that 
hath shall be given ; and the best preparation for right 
living to-morrow, is to live rightly to-day. 

Holiness was meant, our New Testament tells us, for 
every-day use. It is home-made and home-worn. Its 



HOLINESS TO THE LORD. 



99 



exercise hardens the bone, and strengthens the muscle, 
in the body of character. Holiness is religion shining. 
It is the candle lighted, and not hid under a bushel, but 
lighting the house. It is religious principle put into mo- 
tion. It is the love of God sent forth into circulation, on 
the feet, and with the hands, of love to man. It is faith 
gone to work. It is charity coined into actions, and de- 
votion breathing benedictions on human suffering, while 
it goes up in intercessions to the Father of all pity. 
Prayers that show no answers in better lives are not true 
prayers. We took some pains at the outset to see that 
holiness is not to be confounded with mere kind and cor- 
rect behaving, since the love of God is not to be ob- 
scured in the love of man, and morality without piety 
has lost its root ; but also with the qualification, which 
we must now revive and keep before us, that, of these 
two forces in the Christian life, both are indispensable. 
Of religion without holiness — or the spurious pretence 
current under that name — the world has seen enough ; 
it has more than once made society, with all its reforms, 
go backward ; it has sharpened the spear of the scorner, 
and sealed the sceptic's unbelief. It has hidden the 
Church from the market. It has gone to the conference 
and the communion-table, as to a sacred wardrobe, 
where badges are borrowed to cloak the iniquities of 
trade. It has said to many an outcast and oppressed 
class, " Stand by thyself ; the Master's feast is for me, 
and not for you." It has thinned the ranks of open dis- 
ciples, and treacherously offered to objectors the vantage- 
ground of honesty. My friends, get faith, and then use 
it. Gain holiness, and wear it. Pray ; and watch while 
you pray. Keep the Sabbath ; keep it so carefully that 
it shall keep you all the week, — a mutual friendship. 



100 



HOLINESS TO THE LORD. 



Come to the church ; come to carry the church back with 
you, not in its professions nor its external credit, but its 
interior substance, into a consistent holiness. 

Constant, then, but earnest, — even, but laborious, — 
familiar, but positive, — and universal, » but also de- 
cided, — must that manifestation of holiness be, if it is 
to bear the tests of Christ's inspection. 

Holiness to the Lord ! where is that inscription to be 
stamped now ? Not on the vestments of any Levitical 
order ; not on plates of sacerdotal gold, worn upon the 
forehead. Priest and Levite have passed by. The Jew- 
ish tabernacle has expanded into that world-wide brother- 
hood, where whosoever doeth righteousness is accepted. 
Morning has risen into day. Are we children of that 
day ? For form, we have spirit ; for Gerizim and Zion, 
our common scenery. The ministry of Aaron is ended. 
His ephod, with its gold, and blue, and purple, and 
scarlet, and fine twined linen, and cunning work, has 
faded and dropped. The curious girdle, and its chains 
of wreathen gold, are broken. The breastplate of judg- 
ment that lay against his heart, and its fourfold row 
of triple jewels, — of sardius, topaz, and carbuncle, — 
of emerald, sapphire, and diamond, — of ligure, agate, 
and amethyst, — of beryl, onyx, and jasper, — has been 
crushed and lost. The pomegranates are cast aside like 
untimely fruit. The golden bells are silent. Even the 
mitre, with its sacred signet, and the grace of the fashion 
of it, has perished. All the outward glory and beauty of 
that Hebrew worship which the Lord commanded Moses 
has vanished into the eternal splendors of the Gospel, 
and been fulfilled in Christ. What teaching has it left ? 
What other than this ? — that we are to engrave our " Ho- 
liness to the Lord," first on the heart, and then on all that 



HOLINESS TO THE LORD. 



101 



the heart goes out into, through the brain and the hand : 
on the plates of gold our age of enterprise is drawing up 
from mines and beating into currency ; on bales of mer- 
chandise and books of account ; on the tools and bench 
of every handicraft ; on your weights and measures ; on 
pen and plough and pulpit; on the door-posts of your 
houses, and the utensils of your table, and the walls of 
your chambers; on cradle and playthings and school- 
books ; on the locomotives of enterprise, and the bells of 
the horses, and the ships of navigation ; on music-halls 
and libraries ; on galleries of art, and the lyceum desk ; 
on all of man's inventing and building, all of his using 
and enjoying ; for all these are trusts in a stewardship, 
for which the Lord of the servants reckoneth. 

Brethren, it is written that, while our fathers according 
to the flesh have corrected us after their pleasure, God 
chastens us for our profit, — and for what, but that we 
might be partakers of his own holiness ? The transcen- 
dent privileges of sorrow! It is for you and me to con- 
sider, whether this peculiar trait in a Christian character 
is losing anything of its primary honor ; whether, in the 
deserved esteem rendered to upright and philanthropic 
men, to useful and benevolent women, Christians them- 
selves are letting the higher order of holy men and holy 
women cease and be forgotten. If holiness is gradually 
lost in civil accomplishments, be sure God will finally 
be forgotten in his creature. Then human reputation is 
supplanting the divine favor. Comfort is usurping the 
throne of faith. Humanity is losing its grandeur. In- 
troductions to the court of fashion will be preferred before 
the penitence that kneels at the foot of the cross. Cer- 
tificates of office and inventories of wealth will be dearer 
possessions than the secret witnessings of the spirit. 
9' 



102 



HOLINESS TO THE LORD. 



The old sentence out of Heaven, " Except ye repent, ye 
perish," will be rendered into the softer invitation of the 
Tempter, — "Soul, take thine ease; much goods and 
many years are heaven enough." 

Such tendencies it is our part to resist, by a personal 
correction of our hearts. Personal motives enough plead 
for it, — motives that lie closest to the conscience : per- 
sonal immortality and personal peace. For now, says 
the Apostle, when ye are made u free from sin, and be- 
come servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, 
and the end, everlasting life." " Without holiness, no 
man shall see the Lord." 

And now, may God himself make you to increase and 
abound in love toward all men, to the end he may stab- 
lish your hearts unblamably in holiness, at the coming 
of our Lord Jesus Christ! 



SERMON VIII. 



SATAN TRANSFORMED. 

FOR SATAN HIMSELF IS TRANSFORMED INTO AN ANGEL OF 
light. — 2 Cor. xi. 14. 

I shall best open my subject by two Scriptural exam- 
ples, which both define and illustrate it. 

Early in the night before the crucifixion, Jesus has re- 
tired from the chamber of the Last Supper in Jerusalem 
to a lonely spot on the Mount of Olives, with a few of 
his followers. His prophetic mind foresees the awful 
scenes of the next day, — scenes in which he is himself 
to be the victim and the sufferer. It is impossible that 
some feeling of desolation should not come over the spirit 
even of the Son of Man, in such an hour and with such 
a prospect. His sense of loneliness is only made deeper 
by knowing that one of his chosen disciples is at that 
very moment betraying him, and that before morning 
another, and one of the trustiest and most ardent of 
them all, shall disown him. The touching words of one 
of the old prophets of his nation come solemnly to his 
mind, and, as the night-wind of the mountain moans by 
the anxious group, he repeats them, with a calm voice, 
aloud : " All ye shall be offended because of me this 
night ; for it is written, I will smite the Shepherd, and 



104 



SATAN TRANSFORMED. 



the sheep shall be scattered." The pathos of this mourn- 
ful quotation affects the quick sensibilities of the affec- 
tionate, impulsive Peter, and he breaks out into an im- 
passioned and confident pledge of devotion : " Though 
all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never 
be offended." Jesus replies, in the same sad but serene 
and premonitory tone : " This night, before the cock-crow- 
ing announces another day, thou shalt deny me thrice." 
Peter returns a warmer and intenser affirmation : " Though 
I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee." 

So far the temptation has not tried Peter. The shame- 
ful sin he is about to commit has only been put before 
him in words. He is appalled at its enormity ; recoils 
from it ; and, if it should only come to him in that open, 
direct way, that undisguised shape, he would be able to 
say firmly, " Get thee behind me," and cling faithfully 
to his Master. But the real temptation when it comes 
does not come openly, directly; it almost never comes 
so. It comes to him when he is off his guard, comes ob- 
liquely, comes under another name, comes in a maid-ser- 
vant's impertinence irritating his pride, and in the taunts 
of the by-standers insulting his honor. And thus it mas- 
ters him. The crime that looked so hateful in its own 
features he embraces in its thin disguise. The tempter 
came obliquely ; and he is false to the beloved Christ he 
was ready to die for. Cursing and swearing crowned 
the guilt of his perfidy ; and while the day was breaking 
in the sky, the bitter tears of his remorse were falling on 
the pavement of the palace. 

There is a parallel instance in one of the old Syrian 
kings. "When Hazael was only an officer in King Ben- 
hadad's court, the Prophet Elisha one day wept before 
him. And when Hazael asked, " "Why weepeth my 



SATAN TRANSFORMED. 



105 



lord?" " Because I know," answered the prophet, "the 
evil that thou wilt hereafter do unto the children of Israel," 
— and proceeded to picture before him the pillage, the 
slaughter, the burnings, the murders, and all the savage 
cruelties the young man should be guilty of, when he 
should sit on Benhadad's throne. Hazael is shocked at 
this bald statement of his future crimes, and exclaims, 
" Is thy servant a dog, that he should do these inhuman 
things ? " Time ran on ; temptation began to put on its 
various disguises ; it came in the fascinating forms of the 
love of power, empire, splendor, royal authority, national 
honor, military prowess, — came, that is, circuitously ; and 
in the historic sequel we find Hazael with the blood of 
murder on his hands, and the oppressor's infamy upon 
his grave. 

We shall do quite well to personify the forces of sin 
and the seductive influences of temptation under the 
concrete term, Satan. So long as we all know what we 
mean, so long as we understand perfectly that this king- 
dom of darkness and the prince of it, this " Devil and his 
angels," are all carried about within. the unholy heart, it 
will be quite as true to the fact, as much according to the 
analogies of all forcible language, to say Satan, as to use 
certain abstract words standing for vague tendencies and 
general qualities. 

But we need a new theory of Satan, more profound 
and more penetrating than the old fables of nursery tra- 
dition give us ; more in accordance with the spiritual in- 
sight gained under our Christian culture. This power 
of evil that besets us, this compound force of passion and 
materialism, selfishness and appetite, an unhallowed am- 
bition and an unspiritual flesh, is not a less fearful, but a 
much more terrible, because a more cunning adversary, 



106 



SATAN TRANSFORMED. 



than the old imagery represented it. It was but a shal- 
low device, and showed a very inadequate conception of 
devilish art, to represent Satan a hideous and repulsive 
figure, with frightful marks to be recognized by, with a 
beastly foot to certify his track, and all concentrated ma- 
lignities on his distorted features. Why, men would run 
from such ugliness by instinct ; and if this were the type 
of evil, it could never come near enough to tempt us. 
Our virtue would be safe against a seducer that inspired 
■nothing but disgust. In the real Satan, we must look 
for a shrewder cunning, a more subtle diplomacy, a more 
politic disguise. Whatever he may have been to the su- 
perstitious fears of ruder ages, to try the temper of the 
nineteenth century he takes on the address of a courtier, 
the self possession of a man of the world, the royal dig- 
nity of a prince, the beauty of a seraph, and the manners 
of a gentleman. If you meet him now, — and meet him 
you certainly will to-morrow and to-day, — he will be 
transformed into an angel of light. And as with Peter 
and Hazael, so with you and me, it is the policy of the 
tempter to steal upon us by degrees, little by little, and 
by roundabout approaches, till we are taken in his net. 

Except he is utterly lost from decency, and abandoned 
to the infernal passions, which very few even of bad men 
are, a man will not set up an atrocious aim before 
his own eyes, and move straight towards it. He must 
partly conceal his wrong purpose, even from himself. He 
must find an honest name to associate with his dishonest 
dealings, even in his own habits of thinking about them, 
or else, in some careless moment, he will betray his secret 
to the acquaintances he is practising upon. He must 
tamper a little with his own conscience, and half convince 
himself that the evil in him can bear some favorable con- 



SATAN TRANSFORMED. 



107 



struction, or he will not be able to put on the saintly- 
look to impose on the world about him with. The 
treacherous demon in him will peer out through his 
guilty eyes, or tremble in his lying tongue, or give some 
public advertisement of itself by the twitch of his agi- 
tated muscles. For God has so made all the parts of 
this human creature to sympathize together, that when 
the spirit in us sins, the body over it is shaken ; when 
the inward law is violated, the material vesture is dis- 
turbed. A pallid face reveals the corruption of the 
heart ; tremulous nerves, like magnetic wires, convey 
abroad the swift exposure of the criminal intent; — just 
as sympathetic earthquakes undulated through the solid 
frame of the world when ingratitude crucified its Re- 
deemer ; — just as when Eve reached forth her hand to the 
fatal fruit in Eden, and plucked and ate, 

" Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat, 
Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe, 
That all was lost." 

It is not enough, then, for the success of bad intentions, 
that they deceive the surrounding public ; they must to 
some extent, and first, deceive the breast that harbors 
them. It is the understood condition of all stage effect. 
The skilful actor must lose himself in the character he 
assumes. The appointments and the costume of the 
theatre must beguile his own imagination, till, in the 
magic of their transforming power, even his own iden- 
tity loses its reality, and he is no longer himself, but the 
Richard or Shylock or Iago that he personates. Without 
this he will forget his part, the charm of the illusion van- 
ishes, and all the pains and the splendors of the posture- 
master and the scene-shifter are reduced to plain deal- 
boards and plaster and gas and paint. The kingdom of 



108 



SATAN TRANSFORMED. 



iniquity would never make its way in the world one 
inch farther forward, if the wrong-doers that swell its 
ranks did not first deceive themselves. Men do not 
plunge into infamy for infamy's sake. They must have 
a pretext, and go sideways to perdition. We are not a 
race of diabolic fiends, seeking hell ; but we are a race 
of assailable and tempted mortals, by our careless yield- 
in gs to the sorceries of appetite turned away from 
Heaven. 

The peculiarity of temptation that I would fix your 
thoughts upon now is the indirectness of it, — the cir- 
cumventing policy by which it conducts us to shoals of 
shame, and into a vortex of tempests, while we are all 
the while flattering ourselves that we are making a pros- 
perous voyage. 

Come down, then, below the plane of action to the 
subterranean springs of action, — below superficial be- 
havior to the primitive stratum of motive, — below ap- 
pearances put on, to the living soul that a man is. 

"When a man begins to sin, he begins with something 
of the original simplicity and sensibility of his nature. 
Accordingly, whatever the wrong he is about to do, he 
does not go about it as being wrong; he tries first to 
give it some color of right. He must throw over it some 
pretext or apology to make it tolerable to the unper- 
verted part of his moral sense. He must fasten to it 
some excusing title, make out for it some sort of claim 
to respect, and thus provide a palliation to that con- 
science in him which would revolt at it if it stood before 
him as naked guilt. By a succession of such artifices 
we are led on, step by step and little by little, to degrees 
of sin which would have shocked us if we had seen their 
full enormity from the beginning. Few men follow sin 



SATAN TRANSFORMED. 



109 



as sin ; and yet how many follow it. Fewer still leap 
into the depths of degradation or crime by one plunge ; 
but they are not few that are degraded, and that are 
criminal. The Bible account of the Fall in paradise 
gives us a key to the whole secret of the way and the 
power of temptation. Sin besieged the human heart, 
and carried it, and made its fatal entrance into the world, 
not as sin, but as the means to the knowledge of good 
and evil : Satan transformed into an angel of light. 

For want of an unscrupulous and a hardened con- 
science, to set clearly before him the low aim he is fol- 
lowing, the transgressor seeks out one a little more 
honorable which it will do to avow. Thus, by living 
always below his profession rather than above it, his pro- 
fessions themselves will come down to the miry level of 
a besotted worldliness. What is best in him is not set 
up as his rule and his law, — his best knowledge, purest 
conceptions, loftiest visions of goodness, most spiritual 
aspirations, — but only something that is not quite the 
worst. And by this means he surely comes to the worst 
at last. He is tempted down by a circuitous process. 
He is dragged down through a series of moral obliqui- 
ties, as by a winding staircase, and, for want of a steady 
principle and an upward faith, he drops at last, through 
the gyrations of his self-deception, into perdition. 

The young merchant, that has not a thoroughly Chris- 
tian purpose to govern him, tells you he would become 
a prosperous capitalist that he may dispense public bene- 
fits ; but he ends with being a wealthy miser. The law- 
student will aim at the bench, he says, for the sake of 
vindicating justice and elevating jurisprudence, or at 
the senate for the purifying of legislation ; and he be- 
comes a pettifogger in law, or a turncoat in politics. The 

10 



110 



SATAN TRANSFORMED. 



young physician's triple sign points to a votary who pon- 
ders the enlargement of medical science and the deliver- 
ance of mortality from its disorders ; but as he grows older, 
he grows rich on a bigoted opposition to all therapeuti- 
cal reforms, and traffics in the fears and superstition and 
ignorance of the miserable. The crafty excuse under 
which preachers are tempted to keep back salutary truth, 
to prophesy smooth things, to lay private plots for repu- 
tation, and to condescend to cowardly and humiliating 
arts, is that they may increase their influence, — forget- 
ting to ask how much influence so got is worth, — for- 
getting that God will not let the merit of any good end 
be carried over to lend a sanction to the unrighteous 
means. 

Satan does not march his victim up to face perdition 
point-blank. He leads him to it by easy stages, and 
through a labyrinth that shows no danger. Round and 
round go those circling currents of the Northern Sea 
that swallow the ship ; and by the same winding coil 
goes the spiritual decline that ends in spiritual death. It 
is gayety, not the grave, that youth is seeking, when it 
steps inside the circle of forbidden pleasure. It is for 
social cheer, for good-companionship, because he would 
not be morose, because he would scatter his despond- 
ency, that the drunkard drinks damnation, not for dam- 
nation's sake. It is to pay his debt, the gambler urges, 
that he plays, — to pay one debt that he forfeits all his 
credit. The first falsehood of a practised liar may have 
been told to save a friend's reputation, — a generous 
motive he thinks : Satan transformed into an angel of 
light ! A worldly life is begun for the more decent uses 
that wealth may be put to ; but it is followed afterwards 
in servitude to that unscrupulous task-master, avarice. 



SATAN TRANSFORMED. 



Ill 



How much idleness that is full of guilt, under the plausi- 
ble apology of husbanding our strength ! The sluggard 
will save himself for future labor, he says ; and in the 
very economy of his purpose acquires a lazy habit that 
drains all the strength out of his smews. When envy 
would detract from a rival, it puts itself into the chair 
of impartial criticism. When prejudice would stab a 
blameless character, it pretends to be indignant at hy- 
pocrisy. Many a man and many a woman have been 
thought righteously opposed to sin, when they were only 
maliciously opposed to some particular sinner. Spite 
against an erring brother or sister was the feeling. Zeal 
against vice was the cloak put over it. Jealousy or re- 
venge is the motive ; but it borrows a mask of moral- 
ity. Out of the general maxim that books make us 
wise, an unwholesome and prurient imagination fabri- 
cates a flimsy apology for reading flimsier profligacy. 
A patriotic pretence of loyalty to good government 
covers over the vulgar lampoon, the chicanery of the cau- 
cus, the systematic detraction of the party newspaper. 
Satan is transformed into an angel of light. Truth is 
compromised, from the slavish fear of losing office or 
custom or popularity, — and it is called prudence. The 
luxurious aristocrat embroiders his estates with unpaid 
toil, wrung . from the muscles of his starving tenants or 
slaves, and pleads allegiance to the ancient usage of his 
ancestors. The thief explains his stealing by the hunger 
of his children. Murder itself disclaims all thirst for 
blood : it was revenge for insult ; it was desperation ; 
it was a paroxysm of wounded pride, or of ungoverned 
anger. If a man fears that reform will disturb his com- 
fort, or interrupt his immoral traffic, he would have you 
believe he is a stanch conservatist on principle. But if 



112 



SATAN TRANSFORMED. 



he can realize private profits out of a new movement, he 
first makes a merit of radicalism. " When I the most 
strictly and religiously confess myself," said Montaigne. 
" I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tinc- 
ture of vice ; and I am afraid that Plato, in his purest 
virtue, if he had listened and laid his ear close to himself, 
would have heard some jarring sound of human mix- 
ture." 

Be sure that the attack of temptation is most apt to 
be oblique, not open and direct. It destroys our moral 
foothold by a sidelong onset on our principles. When 
the Russian troops were retreating across a frozen lake 
before Napoleon's army, Bonaparte stationed his artillery 
on a neighboring elevation, and ordered them to fire on 
the ice and break it up, and thus engulf the enemy's 
regiments. The guns were levelled and discharged, but 
the balls glanced and rolled on the ice without breaking 
it. Suddenly one of his colonels thought to elevate his 
howitzers and fire into the air. The momentum of the 
descending projectiles, a falling shower of iron and lead, 
shattered the ice, and sent down the host into the waters 
of the lake. It is not the only instance in which the arts 
of war have followed precisely the arts of the Devil. It 
is by the oblique shot of our tempters that 

" The meanest foe of all the train 
Has thousands and ten thousands slain." 

Satan never plays a bold game. He wins by not 
showing his worst at first, by concealing his tricks, 
transformed into an angel of light. It takes a great 
deal of effort to put us thoroughly on our guard against 
his wiles ; but when it is done, it is worth the pains. 

Tempting men imitate their great leader and proto- 



SATAN TRANSFORMED. 



113 



type. They never go directly and openly to their object. 
If they would bend you from your integrity, they will 
flatter your self-respect by holding out to you a moral 
inducement. If they would corrupt your purity, they 
insinuate the poison through some appeal to your better 
affections. If they would weaken the holy restraints 
that gird in, with their blessed zone, the innocence of 
childhood, they will urge some sly argument to an hon- 
orable pride, or else to a friendly sympathy, or else to a 
praiseworthy love of independence ; and the first battery 
that has been plied against many a boy's virtue has been 
the cunning caution that bade him not be afraid of his 
elders. They may say, as Milton makes the Archfiend 
say, sitting like a cormorant on a tree that overlooked 
the sinless Eden and the yet innocent inmates, deceiv- 
ing even his own black heart : 

" Should I at your harmless innocence 
Melt, as I do, yet public reason just, 
Honor and empire with revenge enlarged 
By conquering this new world compels me now 
To do what else, though damned, I should abhor." 

Theologians can cover their sectarian misrepresen- 
tations with the plea of " zeal for the cause," and con- 
troversialists baptize their bigotry with language of Holy 
Writ wrested from its meaning. 

" The Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose 

O what a goodly outside falsehood hath ! " 

Says the Apostle Paul : " If Satan himself is trans- 
formed into an angel of light, it is no great thing if his 
ministers also be transformed as the ministers of right- 
eousness, — whose end shall be according to their works." 

Unrighteous souls are like performers at a masquer- 
ade ; only all the costumes are chosen out of the ward- 
10* 



114 



SATAN TRANSFORMED. 



robe of religion, while all the living figures under them 
are disciples of Belial. Every iniquity that is done un- 
der the sun would be glad to furnish itself out of the 
haberdashery of respectable appearances. No apostle of 
holiness ever lived, perhaps, but has had his likeness 
taken, his deportment mimicked, and his features copied 
by hypocrisy, to palm off depravity with. Every noble 
look and gesture of heroic virtue has been mocked by 
villany and shame. 

" There is no vice so simple but assumes 
Some mark of virtue on its outward parts." 

For Satan transforms himself into an angel of light. 

And now, if it shall be allowed to stand for our excus- 
ing, that temptation came to us circuitously, veiled with 
the mask of virtue, then history has recorded few crimes 
that can be condemned. The business of our moral vigi- 
lance, and the test of our moral strength, is to penetrate 
the delusion, to tear off the mask, to recognize Satan 
even through his transformations. We should know our 
tempters as the sure instincts of innocent hearts know 
hypocrites, " through the disguise they wear." Perhaps 
no tyrant, traitor, debauchee, or robber ever lived, who 
chose depravity for its own sake, or loved sin for its ugli- 
ness. If we are to be exculpated because temptation is 
cunning, oblique, crafty, then Herod was innocent, and 
Judas has been harshly judged ; Nero is an injured man ; 
Benedict Arnold has been misrepresented ; and Jeffries 
and Rochester were rather sinned against than sinning. 
All our sins creep on us under concealment, creep on us 
circuitously. Our first lesson of resistance is to learn 
that Satan is a deceiver, transforms himself, looks an 
angel. 

Ever since the first mother gave her ear to the serpent. 



SATAN TRANSFORMED. 



115 



his approach to his victim has been " with tract oblique " ; 
"in circling spires, fold above fold, sidelong he works his 
way." 

It is so on the rough pavements of our modern cities, 
in these dusty streets, in the homely warehouse and the 
familiar dwelling, as much as among the hyacinths and 
asphodels of Paradise. 

This assembly ! where are your temptations ? You 
sit in God's house, with no signs of peril ; you will go 
to your homes, as you came up from them, with no 
alarms of danger ringing in your affrighted ears. Where 
are your temptations ? Not marching down your streets, 
a bannered host, with trumpets to proclaim their siege, 
and with warlike notes of preparation. Virtue's victo- 
ries would then be comparatively easy. But your temp- 
tations hover about you in wary ambush. They are not 
in great emergencies, heralded by horrid threatenings, but 
in the little things of your daily life, and hidden under 
unsuspected appearances. They lurk in the luxuries on 
which you repose ; in the pillows of comfort on which you 
lay your thoughtless heads ; in the emulation where you 
mistake the pride of excelling for the love of wisdom, 
and superiority for scholarship; in the common labor 
where the world gambles for your soul ; in the merchan- 
dise where you are offered gain for falsehood ; in the 
social fellowship where criminality corrupts under the 
name of cordiality; in the flatteries of your beauty, or 
your talents, or your disposition, which borrow the silver 
tones of friendship, and sound so like them that you 
listen ; in the familiar pleasures that make the feet of the 
hours so swift, and the earth so satisfying, that you feel 
no need of heaven. Here are your tempters. They are 
disguised ; they take circuitous paths ; they carry gifts 



116 



SATAN TRANSFORMED. 



in their hands, and place crowns on your heads ; they 
are clothed like angels of light. 

Examine yourselves. You are put upon your self- 
scrutiny. To know your enemy is half the battle. 

Examine yourselves. " But ourselves only ? " do you 
say ? " Shall we not go and watch Satan's kingdom, 
and the gates whence his legions issue, as well ? " No ; 
yourselves, watch yourselves only. For the kingdom of 
hell, as well as the kingdom of heaven, is within us. 
All the mischief is there, its origin there, its power there, 
its fatal result there. There Satan's seat is. No harm 
can come nigh you, but through the gate of your own 
yielding heart, set open by your own perverted will. 



SERMON 



IX. 



FOUR APOSTLES. 

THERE ARE DIVERSITIES OF GIFTS, BUT THE SAME SPIRIT. AND 
THERE ARE DIFFERENCES OF ADMINISTRATIONS, BUT THE SAME 
LORD. — 1 Cor. xii. 4, 5. 

It seems to be a method of the Divine Economy to 
bring out the complete circle of Truth by a variety of 
characters. Christianity is not so disobliging a system, 
that it requires of all its disciples that they have one 
temperament; not so angular, that it must mould every 
constitution into one fixed shape, and condemn all our 
differences from one another as departures from itself. 
On the contrary, it rejoices in diversity, grafts its heav- 
enly spirit on constitutions the most contrasted, and uses 
the peculiarities that distinguish one good man from an- 
other as only a more copious language for illustrating its 
illimitable doctrine. 

Just as God shows the world the fulness of his great 
historical ideas, and pushes forward the plans of his provi- 
dence, by bringing upon the grand theatre a multiplicity 
of nations, each marked by its own national characteris- 
tics ; just as he supplies a defect in one by an abundance 
in another, corrects the excesses of a past age by the an- 



118 



FOUR APOSTLES. 



tagonistic tendencies of the next, and sets off the traits of 
this country to balance the opposite traits of that ; just 
as he appoints Judsea to represent reverence, Athens in- 
telligence, and Rome law, counteracts tropical luxury 
by Northern simplicity, quickens Italian indolence by 
Scandinavian enterprise, outweighs the dreamy Oriental 
mysticism by the practical genius of the "West, opens 
industrious America to atone for military Europe, and 
checks Ultramontane sentiment by Saxon logic, thus 
combining an educational apparatus of many climates 
and a normal school of many kingdoms to teach the les- 
son of universal wisdom ; — so does he convey that higher 
and diviner gift, the religion of his Son, which is finally 
to conquer, penetrate, and outlive them all, through many 
forms of living example, and many kinds of statement 
corresponding. 

After Christ, the Gospel was not planted on earth by 
one man, but by several men. And these several men 
were not alike altogether. There were striking contrasts 
between them, and this did not happen by accident. The 
more minds, and the more unlike each other, chosen as 
channels for putting the new life into human society, the 
more certain was that life to gain access to all classes, 
lay hold of different sets of thoughts and feelings, and 
act broadly on the consciousness and convictions of the 
whole. It exemplifies the inexhaustible richness and 
depth, as well as the wonderful flexibility of Christian 
truth, I think, that its Apostles bore so slight resemblance 
to each other. Perhaps we shall find reason to regard it 
as a cause for personal gratitude. 

Out of the thirteen men that acted as Christian Apos- 
tles, there were four, the most active, the most conspicu- 
ous, and the most efficient in founding the Church. I 



FOUR APOSTLES. 



119 



select these four — Peter, Paul, James, and John — as rep- 
resenting respectively four prominent qualities in a well- 
proportioned disciple, four branches of individual char- 
acter, as well as four classes of persons. The points that 
I would have fasten your attention especially are these : 
1. That, while these four teachers were stamped emphati- 
cally with Christ's doctrine, so that the faith of a true 
believer was their first distinction, rising above and sub- 
ordinating all their separate peculiarities, yet that the 
Christian life took in each of them a distinctive form and 
color, modified by their several organizations, so that, 
though holiness was the supreme principle and end with 
every one, it wore a peculiar aspect in each ; 2. That the 
combination of these four presented Christianity in its 
wholeness, blending their personal diversities in a com- 
prehensive unity ; and 3. That, by a personal imitation of 
what was paramount in each, and adjusting together the 
elements of character they represent, we may approach 
to something like a symmetrical life. 

I. First appears Peter, ardent, impetuous, vehement 
Peter. Neither the most effectual nor the most attractive 
type of discipleship will be manifest, without a good al- 
lowance of his fervor. A character where that quality 
predominates is liable to glaring faults ; because the en- 
ergy of the impulsive nature may act with equal force in 
any direction, and unless principle and judgment sus- 
tain the proportion, there will be plenty of follies to be 
ashamed of, and hasty sins to be atoned for by remorse. 
Considering, too, that Simon Peter was summoned to 
follow his Master when he was already somewhat ad- 
vanced in years, it is not singular — indeed, unless we 
suppose a miracle to have been wrought to transform 
him, it would have been quite singular otherwise — that 



120 



FOUR APOSTLES. 



some of the faults incident to that sort of temperament, 
faults that his old religion had not disciplined into re- 
straint, should be often reappearing to dishonor his pro- 
fession. Accordingly we find, in tracing his career, that 
his zeal was mixed with many inconsistencies. Incon- 
stancy compromised his ardor; temper lurked in close 
alliance with his impetuosity ; and violence of speech 
was a mortifying appendage to his vehemence. But 
Christ saw that he had in him the noble material of a vi- 
tal and victorious apostleship, and it is most interesting 
for us to see how the benignant spirit of the new faith 
worked upon him, till it finally purged out the old bitter 
leaven, refashioned him into a self-commanding as well 
as an eager champion, and at last made him first and 
foremost of the twelve companions of his Lord. It was 
a long battle, however, as it must be with many a Peter- 
like disposition among us, between spontaneous activity 
and calm control. Standing by the sea-side, at his busi- 
ness as a fisherman, he was one of the first that Jesus 
called to come with him ; and there at the very outset, 
ready as ever after, he did not hesitate an instant to leave 
his nets bleaching on the sand, abandoning his property 
and his home, for the uncertain fortunes of a leader that 
had not where to lay his head. It was he that cried out 
in an abundance of self-confidence almost childish, when 
he saw Jesus walking on the waves, " Let me come to 
thee on the water," but the next moment, by a revulsion 
as rapid, screamed, " Lord, save me, for I sink." It was 
he that, when Christ asked sorrowfully, seeing some dis- 
affected adherents forsaking him, " Will ye also go 
away ? " broke out into that passionate pledge of devo- 
tion, " Lord, to whom shall we go ? we believe and are 
sure that thou art the Son of God." It was he that, an- 



FOUR APOSTLES. 



121 



other time, answered so promptly to the question, " Whom 
say ye that I am ? " — " Thou art the Christ, Son of the 
living God." It was he that interrupted that serene and 
majestic prophecy, " The Son of Man must go up to Jeru- 
salem, suffer, and be killed," with his impatient protest, 
" Far be it from thee, Lord," and had to be rebuked for 
his worldly ambition. It was Peter — it could not have 
been any other, and we should have known it to be he if 
no name were given — that rejected the menial service 
whereby the condescending Redeemer symbolized the 
humility of his religion, and exclaimed, " Thou shalt 
never wash my feet " ; but the next moment, at the 
touching reproof, " If I wash thee not, thou hast no part 
with me," sprang to the opposite extreme, and was ready 
for any amount of superfluous submission, begging, 
" Lord, not my feet only, but my hands and my head." 
With fortitude enough to draw his sword and smite the 
high-priest's servant at the arrest, he yet fell asleep from 
fatigue amidst the solemnities of the garden, and could 
not watch one hour when the traitor was leading on the 
officers. Above all, you will remember that most fla- 
grant proof of his unregulated impulses, when, after all 
the privileges of his earlier and constant intimacy with 
the beloved Messiah, — after having been admitted to the 
confidence of sharing his dwelling at Capernaum, — hav- 
ing been one of the three favored friends permitted to be 
present at the raising of Jairus's daughter, when all others 
were shut out, and to witness the glory of the Mount of 
Transfiguration, and to share in the awful hour at Geth- 
semane, — having been put forward to speak on every oc- 
casion for the Twelve as their acknowledged head, and 
having resolutely promised, " Though all men should be 
offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended," — 
11 



122 



FOUR APOSTLES. 



he three times declared, when stung by insult and ridicule, 
" I know not the man." And yet, so far as subsequent 
fidelity, both in intensity and perseverance, could atone, 
he washed out the stain of these sad disgraces, by deeds 
as well as tears. When that burning, fiery spirit once 
took the steady poise of principle, it wrought out splen- 
did triumphs of virtue ; it pierced the Gentile idolatries 
with an impassioned eloquence that turned them from 
Jupiter and Diana to the living God, from pride and sen- 
suality to repentance and immortality. It quickened 
this brave Apostle, till he shook the Eastern world ; made 
him the first to spring down into the empty tomb out of 
which his Lord had risen, and first to proclaim the resur- 
rection among the living ; plunged him into the sea to 
greet Jesus at his reappearance in the body ; brought three 
tnousand converts into the Church by a single speech at 
Pentecost ; enabled him to sleep calmly as an infant be- 
tween the two soldiers and under the double chain in the 
prison ; braced him to that magnificent assertion of the 
everlasting truth of a Law higher than any of man's 
making, when, standing arraigned for speaking the truth, 
before high-priest and rulers, he said firmly, " "Whether 
it be right to hearken unto you more than unto God, 
judge ye"; and, at last, inspired him with that character- 
istic courage that prompted him, as the traditions tell, to 
request at his execution that he might be crucified with 
the head downwards, because he deserved to die in greater 
agony than the Saviour that he had once denied. His 
Epistles overflow with the same zealous devotion. Did 
not his fervor finally justify, then, the title given him by 
one who knew what was in him, — Peter, — Cephas, — 
a rock, — the rock on which he should build his Church ? 
Peter was an enthusiast. He was much else besides, 



FOUR APOSTLES. 



123 



but pre-eminently he was that. In the culture of our 
spiritual life, and the exercise of it, both, we need this 
Petri ne element. We want the glow, the warmth, the 
flame, of this energetic, fervent, resistless zeal. No in- 
dividual heart, nor any system of theology, will have 
vital power without it. Selfish frigidity and worldly in- 
difference are its enemies. If we grow cold, we shall 
freeze ; if we grow torpid, we shall go to sleep. Doubt- 
less, we are liable to the same errors in it that the Apos- 
tle was. Such errors are in private places as in public. 
If we had known Peter in his house, we should probably 
have overheard him retorting angrily to his housemate, or 
giving some unreasonable indulgence to Petronica, his 
daughter. The place is nothing, and does not much vary 
the temptation. To guide the impulse, wherever you 
are, by carefulness ; to steady the wayward transport of 
feeling, at home or abroad, by sober meditation ; to hal- 
low the hot enthusiasm by the sanctities of prayer; — this 
is the task of all of you that have Peter's ardent temper- 
ament, and would share his moral victory. 

II. And to that very end, we must call in a new ele- 
ment, the element that had its peculiar impersonation in 
Peter's fellow- Apostle, Paul. A Greek by birth and a 
Jew by ancestral blood, a Pharisee, by education, of the 
strictest sect, and a Christian by one of the most wonder- 
ful of conversions, he was a man to understand both the 
Judaism he was to pull down and the Gospel he was to 
build up and spread abroad. His fierce natural temper 
made him a fearfully alert persecutor, under the Sanhe- 
drim, and his elegant literary culture fitted him to dis- 
pute powerfully with Greek sophists at Mars' Hill. 
Whether as Jew or Christian, he believed with all his 
soul. The same earnestness of conviction, strength of 



124 



FOUR APOSTLES. 



will, and vitality of allegiance, went into Ms Judaism 
and his Christianity ; for after the straitest sect he lived 
a Pharisee, and yet was not disobedient to the heavenly 
vision of the light above the brightness of the sun. He 
was a man to look on with cool consent at Stephen's 
martyrdom, before he heard the voice from heaven ; and 
after the Word, like a two-edged sword, had pierced the 
joints and marrow of his spirit, to accuse himself as the 
chief of sinners, and cry, " O wretched man that I am! 
what I would not, that I do ; who shall deliver me from 
the body of this death ? " His strong passions made all 
his religious experience vivid as the lightning, and his 
comprehensive intellect made his eloquence reverberate 
like the thunder. His moods were various, but all in- 
tense. He could with equal skill sport satire with the 
Corinthians, or foil such dignitaries as Agrippa and Fe- 
lix with his polished rhetoric, or smite Elymas the sor- 
cerer and the backsliders at Galatia with the battle-axe 
of his indignation. Too rapid in his style to balance an 
antithesis, or limit a parenthesis, or modulate his senten- 
ces, he forgets all the rules of composition in the thing 
to be said. He was resolute enough to withstand Bar- 
nabas, his associate, to the face, in a question of princi- 
ple, yet tender enough to restore Eutychus and comfort 
afflicted women; a man to confound equally the Jews 
who required a sign, and the idolaters that sought after 
worldly wisdom ; a man to spend three years in Arabia 
to prove whether the inspiration was genuine, and its 
pulse healthy ; a man to sing praises at midnight in a 
jail, and, when an earthquake opened the walls, calmly 
to tell the jailer to do himself no harm, for he had not 
availed himself of his liberty ; and then to preach Christ 
there to the frightened keepers, and the next day, when 



FOUR APOSTLES. 



125 



the magistrates were troubled at their illegal arrest, to 
stand upon his dignity, and refuse to go out till he had 
humiliated them by compelling them to come and be- 
seech him to go ; a man that could tell, and tell without 
complaining, but with a light heart and in a cheerful 
tone, of stripes and stonings, shipwrecks and perils by 
the wilderness, of robbers and false brethren, of watchings 
and nakedness, of escaping by a basket from a window, 
of hunger and thirst and weariness daily, glorying in his 
tribulations, — could tell also of visions and revelations in 
the third heavens, of joy unspeakable, and the peace that 
passeth understanding. 

The secret of all this steadfastness of spirit was faith 
in God, — Paul's leading doctrine. He had known the 
tossings and wrestlings of a sinful nature, and pictures 
them in his terrible description of the warfare between 
the lusts and the spirit. " Chief of sinners" was the 
dark background that contrasted the radiant mercy of 
the cross. He had tried legal righteousness, or keeping 
the letter of the law, and found no man living could keep 
it inviolate ; there was no satisfaction there. Like all 
men since of very deep and intense moral experience, — 
and such always find themselves interpreted and satisfied 
only by Paul, — he came out at last upon the ground of 
acceptance on account of faith in Christ, and entire giv- 
ing up of the soul to the free mercy of God ; — the only 
permanent ground for Christian theology to rest upon. 

Here, then, for the second element of Christian char- 
acter, with Paul as its exemplar, is faith, a belief, 
resident, in his case, in a mind of such logical acute- 
ness and dialectical address, as could shape it into a sys- 
tem for the understanding, and reason it into the convic- 
tions of the churches by his argumentation. Something 
11* 



126 



FOUR APOSTLES. 



to believe, — something definite, — this is the Pauline 
contribution to Christian completeness. Its grandest ef- 
fect is seen in himself ; but in humbler degrees it may- 
work results of inconceivable greatness and blessedness 
in us. It gives steadiness to' fervor and permanence to a 
Peter's impulsiveness. It was by its uplifting power 
that Paul could break forth into those triumphant strains, 
ringing like sublime anthems down through all history 
to this hour. Listen to two or three whose lyric modu- 
lations show a poet's nature throbbing under the logi- 
cian's armor : " And now I go bound in the spirit unto 
Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me 
there, save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, 
saying that bonds and afflictions abide me. But none 
of these things move me ; neither count I my life dear 
unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy." 
" For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my de- 
parture is at hand. I have fought a good fight, finished 
my course, kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up 
for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord shall 
give rne at that day." " For I am persuaded that neither 
death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, 
nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor 
depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate 
us from the love of God." " This corruptible must put 
on incorruption ; this mortal must put on immortality. 
Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our 
Lord Jesus Christ." 

III. This doctrine of faith, however, so dear to Paul, 
is capable of being urged to an extreme ; or rather, 
though faith itself cannot possibly be too abundant, we 
may hold a particular notion of it in such disproportion 
as to exclude another element, quite as necessary. We 



FOUR APOSTLES. 



127 



begin to feel that we must call in an apostle of works, 
practical righteousness, an external life of integrity and 
charity, to keep the balance even ; but before we call, he 
has already come. James, a near kinsman of Jesus, a 
man upright from his youth, of irreproachable manners 
and respected character, even before the new splendor of 
the Gospel standard broke upon him, was that Apostle. 
James was the representative of the right life, as Paul 
was of the right mind ; and so consistently did he exem- 
plify in his person the doctrine he preached in his minis- 
try and wrote in his Epistle, that he received from his 
acquaintances the noble title James the Just. Not very 
much is said of him in the narratives, but, as often hap- 
pens with silent men, a great deal was done by him. 
He clung to a quiet, straight path in his ministry at 
Jerusalem. Believing that usefulness is the best test 
of piety, he was content to be unostentatiously useful. 
Some honors, to be sure, could not be kept away from 
so trustworthy a mind, however modest. He was chosen 
moderator of the first Christian Council, convened at 
Jerusalem to consider the question whether Gentile 
converts should be admitted to equal privileges in the 
Church with converts of Jewish education, and without 
circumcision. He summed up the merits of the case in 
a short speech, which, curiously enough, contains in its 
brief compass a clear assertion of his cherished idea that 
a right line of life is of more consequence than any form. 
There is a tradition, that he was so spotless in conduct 
that he was suffered to enter the Holy of holies in the 
temple, where none but the high-priest entered. And 
as his death at the hands of his persecutors took place 
just before the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews used 
to refer the ruin of their city to the vengeance of Heaven 



128 



FOUR APOSTLES. 



for the slaughter of so holy a saint. Doubtless James, 
from his correct habits, was shocked at the occasional 
sins of Peter, and perhaps he was not quite satisfied with 
the sharp reasonings and metaphysical theology of Paul. 
His single brief letter, full of concise, epigrammatic ex- 
pressions, runs in a direction not to controvert Paul's, 
but to provide for a want Paul's left open. Whether or 
not it was designed, as some of the ancients thought, to 
be a reply to Paul, it is at any rate an admirable sequel. 
It is a plea, in language, for the noble righteousness 
of action that distinguished his character. Paul had 
said, and truly, " Ye are saved by faith." James added, 
" Show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show 
thee my faith by my works." This is the burden of his 
doctrine, — not works independent of faith, not mere ex- 
ternal morality, not dry, legal obedience, with no moist- 
ure and no root, — but works as expressing faith, mani- 
festing it, its natural fruit, and in turn re-acting upon it, 
to confirm and multiply it. Paul bids us believe and 
we shall be saved ; James says " Amen " to this, but re- 
minds us, that, if we deal justly, and follow conscience, 
and show mercy to the poor, and keep the law, we shall 
find our faith increasing thereby, and without these is 
no salvation. Paul says, " Faith cometh by hearing " ; 
James exhorts, " Be ye doers of the word, and not hear- 
ers only," and goes on to explain, that mere careless hear- 
ing will no more change a man, than looking in a glass 
a-nd going away to forget the image. Paul passes a glo- 
rious eulogy upon charity ; James explains what charity 
is, and is not, insisting that merely to say to the hungry 
and naked, " Go along and be warmed and fed," is no 
charity, just as a faith which lies inoperative in the out- 
ward letter, — letting the man cheat, or deceive, or op- 



FOUR APOSTLES. 



129 



press, or practise dishonest politics, or play the hypocrite 
in his daily business while he professes it, is a dead faith. 
Paul proclaims the immortal truth, lying, as I believe, 
at the very heart of the Gospel, " By God's grace are 
ye saved, and that not of yourselves ; it is free gift." 
James accepts this declaration, but urges us to remem- 
ber that the spirit must have a body ; that God's free 
grace is granted only on conditions, and may be detected 
by certain signs ; and that where it really has a vital seat 
within, it will inevitably bud and blossom into the pure 
and undefiled religion, which visits the fatherless and 
widows in their affliction, and keeps itself unspotted 
from the world. 

Here, then, we have morality. James is a teacher of 
ethics. We are to obey the commandments, as well as 
feel and believe. Alone, this legal righteousness will be 
hard, barren, and Jewish. Doing things only because 
they are commanded, is not inspiring, and does not bring 
peace. It needs the infusion of Peter's animating im- 
pulse, and Paul's vivid reliance on God ; needs Peter's 
warm blood, and Paul's unshaken confidence. These 
will yield vitality and earnest persistency. We have 
then ardor, conviction, and morality ; but one thing is 
wanting yet, and that is love. We get, by these three, 
zeal, faith, and works, but not yet perfect peace. 

IV. We must summon, therefore, a fourth witness ; 
and he is at hand in the person of John, — John, whose 
love for Jesus earned for him the epithet, unequalled in 
all the honors and dignities of the world's nobilities, 
" the Beloved Disciple," — gentle, affectionate, contem- 
plative, seraphic John. We have already seen him very 
near the Saviour, on more than one occasion of unusual 
solemnity, in private, tender fellowship. It was he who 



130 



FOUR APOSTLES. 



leaned his head on Jesus's bosom at the Supper ; he who 
received from the lips quivering on the cross that dying 
charge, " Behold thy mother," — and thenceforth took 
Mary to his own home ; he that first believed, out of the 
fulness of his trusting heart, after the stone was rolled 
from the sepulchre ; he that, with Peter, wrought the 
merciful miracle, and healed the lame man at the gate of 
the temple named Beautiful, and made it more worthy 
the name by that beautiful compassion ; he that, in the 
infirmity of extreme age, when his voice could utter no 
more, stretched out his hands, every Sabbath morning, 
over the assembly, and said that simple precept, — the 
rich substance of many longer sermons, — " Little chil- 
dren, love one another." His Gospel and his Epistles 
are constant breathings of spiritual aspiration and be- 
nignant charity. His Gospel, so unlike the other three, 
relates few incidents, but gives us more of Christ's de- 
vout meditations and lofty discourses. It opens with the 
mystical passage on the Logos, or Word made flesh ; gives 
the midnight conversation, couched in terms that seem 
to boiTOW mystery from the shaded scene, with Nico- 
demus, on the New Birth ; repeats all that symbolical 
language of Jesus, since become so precious to spiritual 
minds in his Church, where he describes himself and his 
truth under the analogy of Light, Life, Living Bread, a 
Fountain of Water, and pictures sin under the strong 
figures of Darkness and Death. It is from John that we 
have the divine prayer of Jesus before his agony ; the 
mystical words about the soul that is born of God and 
dwells in God ; the whole unfathomable doctrine of 
oneness with the Father and the Son ; the touching ac- 
count of the raising of Lazarus at Bethany ; that blessed 
chapter of consolation, known so well to every Christian 



FOUR APOSTLES. 



131 



heart that ever suffered by pain or by bereavement, be- 
ginning, " Let not your heart be troubled " ; all the pa- 
thos that pervades the sorrowful record of what took 
place before the crucifixion ; and the full reports, so over- 
flowing with the fond memories of Christian grief, of 
what was spoken after the resurrection. His main Epis- 
tle is almost a repetition of these few comprehensive 
thoughts : God is love ; beloved, now are we the sons of 
God ; love one another ; walk in the light of life ; every 
man hath the witness in himself ; the light lighting every 
man that cometh into the world. 

In one word, John is the Apostle of spirituality. He 
goes, for evidence, proof, satisfaction, within, into the 
breast ; not, like Paul, with dialectics and metaphysics, 
but with simple love. His wisdom is of the heart ; his 
faith is less of belief than trust ; less by argument than 
by intuition. His view of Christianity was introspective 
and subjective, in the terms of philosophy ; but he was 
no rationalist ; for with all his soul he loved a supernat- 
ural Christ ; and his doctrine was as simple as a child's 
thanksgiving. No Apostle seems to have clung with 
such reverential affection to the person of Jesus. His 
faith is all bound up in that personal attachment. For 
him there was not, as for any of us there cannot be, any 
Christianity without the Jesus of Nazareth, any institu- 
tional, or philosophical, or intellectual Gospel, without 
the Son of Mary crucified and ascended, gone from the 
Bethlehem stable to the right hand of his Father. 

John, then, completes the full Apostolic manifestation 
of Christian character. He is the fourth of that united 
quaternion that show us what we ought to be. He 
adds to Peter's fervor, and Paul's belief, and James's mo- 
rality, his own affection. He is a reconciler, and brings 



132 FOUR APOSTLES. 

in that crowning and harmonizing element of love with- 
out which zeal and faith and conscience are all wanting. 
The churches blessed with his living superintendence 
were scattered over Lesser Asia. Let us see to it that 
over all churches, this our church, and over every heart, 
broods the benignant blessing of his heavenly spirit. 
His countenance has been portrayed by the arts as ra- 
diant with inspiration. Let the beauty of his gentleness 
shine in our lives. " His thoughts," says Jerome, one of 
the old Fathers, M mounted, like an eagle, to the very 
throne of God." It is not too much to believe, that, if 
we commit ourselves cordially to their guidance, they 
well bear our souls up, on their wings, to the same 
heaven. 

Here, then, let us rest. You need no lengthened ap- 
plication of so suggestive a subject. Peter, Paul, James, 
John : the zealot, the believer, the moralist, the spiritual- 
ist ; Impulse, Conviction, Law, and Love ; will, intel- 
lect, conscience, affection ; a good disposition, a clear 
faith, a right life, a pure heart. These are the constit- 
uents of the perfect man. 

I said these qualities are not found alone, nor without 
some admixture of all the rest, in the several Apostles 
that exemplify them ; nor is any of them held as by ad- 
verse title against the others. Every one shares, in some 
less degree, in the ruling peculiarity of his companions. 
I speak only of the trait that predominates in each, and 
the symmetry that comes by the mutual counterbalan- 
cing of their defects. 

Peter's vacillation is offset by Paul's steadfastness ; 
James's regularity, by Peter's impulsiveness ; John's mys- 
ticism, by James's common sense ; Paul's logical under- 
standing, by John's affectionate heart. 



FOUR APOSTLES. 



133 



We should go to Peter for animation, to Paul for a 
creed, to James for rules of behavior, to John for peace. 
Peter supplies hope ; Paul, steadfastness ; James, self- 
control ; John, sensibility. 

In your own lives, take something excellent from each. 
Whether your natural temperament be Petrine or Paul- 
ine, Jacobean or Johannean, copy what is imitable in all. 
Blend their virtues and graces together. Count it high 
honor to share largely in the attainments of any one, — 
but better still to gain generous proportions by following 
so many. Strive to expand your obedience, and stretch, 
by ever loftier examples, your aspiration. Quicken zeal, 
strengthen faith, enlarge beneficence, and deepen love. 
Rejoice that the Christian standard is so high, is infinite, 
is unattainable here ; yet struggle none the less to rise 
to it hereafter. Above all, labor, and watch, and pray, 
that, looking to Him who is greater than Apostles, and 
Head over all churches, you may be changed into the 
same image, finding the fulness of the measure of the 
stature of Christ. For though " there are differences of 
administrations, there is the same Lord." 



12 



SERMON X. 



ACCEPTANCE OE THE HEART. 

SHE HATH DONE WHAT SHE COULD. — Mark XIV. 8. 

In many aspects of it, I regard this simple sentence as 
one of the most encouraging expressions that fell from 
our Lord's lips. It was uttered in defence of a woman 
who ventured to approach the Messiah under the un- 
ceremonious impulse of affection, destitute, so far as 
we know, of any recommendation from family circum- 
stance or social distinction, but urged solely by an ir- 
resistible longing to do something, however humble or 
irregular, in behalf of this divine friend, who has gained 
the unutterable, enthusiastic devotion of her soul. Had 
she brought those badges of high position which are so 
potent to hush the criticism and rouse the admiration of 
the multitude, had she come bearing the recognized au- 
thority of some official alliance or lordly husband's es- 
tate, we should have heard no complaints of the waste 
of the ointment that she poured on the venerated head. 
Still, the inherent grace and beauty of the act forbade any 
direct reproof ; and so jealousy meanly suggests that the 
precious perfume might have been better sold, the price 
given to the poor, and this woman have rendered her 
demonstrations of gratitude in some more "practical" 



ACCEPTANCE OF THE HEART. 



135 



or active way. The answer of Jesus not only rebukes 
the littleness which these censures betrayed, but it in- 
structively vindicates the woman's cordial, unstudied sac- 
rifice, and not hers only, but the offerings of humble 
loyalty and silent love to him in all time and over all 
the earth. " Let her alone : why trouble ye her ? She 
hath wrought a good work on me. She hath done what 
she could. Wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached 
throughout the whole world, this that she hath done 
shall be told for a memorial of her." It is the accept- 
ance, by the Son of God, of lowly and retiring good- 
ness. It is the legitimation and approval of all hearty 
gifts to the Master, by the Master's voice. It is the 
eternal benediction of the Gospel on despised fidelity 
and neglected love. 

I proceed to mention some of the bearings of this sig- 
nificant saying, which show it to be full of encourage- 
ment, and full of instruction. 

I. The first of these is, that it so plainly and power- 
fully asserts the superior worth of the heart's feeling 
over any outward acts. The implication of Christ's 
language certainly is, that, so far as doing went, this 
woman had but small title to consideration. If she 
were to be judged by visible achievements, by showy 
enterprises, by notable charities or literary fame, her life 
might be called a failure. Nothing in the way of per- 
formances marked her out for pre-eminence. But " she 
had done what she could." That alone made her pre- 
eminent. The very form of the expression implies that, 
in one sense, she had done but little. Yet that little 
was enough. It was a test of her sincerity. It said 
distinctly that she was in earnest. The costliness of her 
gift in proportion to her means, while it was nothing to 



136 



ACCEPTANCE OF THE HEART. 



Him she would honor, was a guaranty that she was not 
trifling. In fact, by a more correct rendering of the 
original, the Greek word translated here " very precious " 
would read simply " pure " or " unadulterated " spike- 
nard, — not " costly." Had it been far less than it was, 
and had it been all she could bring, his blessing would 
have been the same. For mind, he does not say, " Stop, 
consider, this alabaster-box really cost a good deal of 
money ; it could not have been bought for less than 
three hundred denarii." No ; but he says, " She hath 
done what she could " ; that is, she hath demonstrated 
the deep and tender attachment of her soul. She be- 
lieves on her Lord. She loves the Saviour for his holi- 
ness, his mercy, his divine benignity. One penny's 
worth, if it is only the utmost that self-denial can do, is 
as good for that as ten thousand shekels. Did he not 
declare as much, in what he said of the two mites that 
the poor widow cast into the temple-treasury ? Nay, 
did he not equally accept, and bless with the same favor, 
another woman, poorer and frailer still, who had noth- 
ing to give him but tears and kisses for his feet ? The 
whole spiritual meaning of gifts consists in the dispo- 
sition of the giver. Distinctions of weight and measure, 
standards of currency, tables of value, rates of exchange, 
calculations of outlay, color, material, and shape, vanish 
before that simple and royal touchstone in the breast. 
It is felt to be so, even in the presents of human friend- 
ship ; and spiritual sincerity does not pass for less in 
the eyes of Him who searches and sees the heart, than 
with us. 

Had the question been between actions and pro- 
fessions, Christ's decision would have been different. 
Here is a point of constant mistake. Professions and 



ACCEPTANCE OF THE HEART. 



137 



feelings are not equivalent. As compared with profes- 
sions, good deeds are put into ever-lustrous eminence, 
both by their solid quality, and by that grand ref- 
utation of all talking hypocrisy and ceremonial cant, 
from the mouth of the Judge himself, " Not every one 
that saith unto me, ' Lord, Lord,' shall enter into 
the kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the will 
of my Father." We cannot be wrong — if there is 
such a thing as truth in God's universe, we must be 
right — in esteeming one palpable and ponderable ac- 
tion in Christ's name before a library of dogmatic 
credos, subscription to the straitest ecclesiastical vows, 
or the handsomest adjustment of the mantle of public 
conformity. If we must have one without the other, 
an acre of statements must be let go rather than an 
ounce of life. This, however, is not the alternative 
put before us in this homage of the Hebrew woman. 
Christ's eye falls, not on the box of ointment, as if to 
weigh its pretension or spell out some article of a Rab- 
binical creed graven on its cover, but it falls on Mary's 
secret, inmost soul. That being sound, all is sound. 
She believes, she trusts, she loves ; therefore " she hath 
done what she could." Out of that deep and rooted 
affection all manner of obedient fruits must grow, in 
time, as surely as love is the willing servant of the 
beloved. 

And here opens upon us a great spiritual truth, of the 
utmost practical importance. Nothing is more common 
than to hear this among the private confessions of earnest 
and self-distrustful persons, wishing they could feel them- 
selves accepted before God : " There is so little that I have 
done, so little that I can do. My station restricts me, my 
weakness disables me. I look round on others, and they 
12* 



138 



ACCEPTANCE OF THE HEART. 



are busy and useful, earning gratitude or fame. But I 
am hemmed in by four narrow walls, or by narrower cir- 
cumstances. Is the difficulty in them or in me ? I seem 
to have done no more this year than the last, and to gain 
nothing in achievement as I go on. Regarding either 
the disinterested Saviour as my example, or his toiling 
followers even, I am certainly an unprofitable servant." 
Now, supposing this to be sincere, — and we must have 
had a barren experience if we do not know it often is, — ■ 
what such a disciple needs for encouragement is obviously 
the very doctrine of the text. " She hath done what she 
could " ; and the one thing most momentous, most central, 
most decisive of all that can be done, — she hath believed 
in her Lord. There is no station, no fortune, no bash- 
fulness of nature, no timidity of nerve, no obscurity of 
condition, where that is not possible, and where the joy 
and glory of the reward thereof may not arise and shine. 
Helpless invalids, reserved women, servants under com- 
mand, young members of worldly and unsympathizing 
families, may all trust in their Divine Friend with patient 
submission, love him with constant devotion, commune 
with him in sincere desires for his excellence, and they 
can try for ever to preserve and illustrate his gentle and 
serene and disinterested spirit. If they do this, they 
ought to know that they are his, to dismiss despondency, 
to rely on his promises, to count themselves committed 
and accepted friends of his household and his heart. 
They shall, one day, if they keep that temper and pur- 
pose, hear him say, " These also have done what they 
could." If the New Testament holds forth one clear doc- 
trine, it is that character before God is determined by the 
state of the affections and the bent of the will. Where 
these incline selfward or earthward, all is weak and wrong. 



ACCEPTANCE OF THE HEART. 



139 



You have not done what you could. A righteous life is 
not an accidental appendage to a good heart, but an in- 
evitable consequence or outflow of it. Christ and his 
Apostles understood man's profoundest nature when they 
made it their constant answer to the question, " What 
shall I do to be saved, or to win eternal life ? " — "Believe 
on the Lord Jesus Christ with all thine heart" ; for they 
knew this was what each and all could do, — what would 
prompt every other needful work of righteousness. Do 
we need a simpler, more spiritual, or more invigorating 
revelation ? 

II. Again, the words I have used for my text bestow 
a blessing on the feeling of personal affection towards 
Christ. This was what this woman had shown ; it was 
all that she had shown. She had not yet gone abroad 
into public duties ; we do not read that she had visited 
the needy, or joined in any public measure for the for- 
warding of any Christian cause. All this she was sure 
to do, just so fast and so far as social occasions, her own 
powers, and other providential conditions, would permit ; 
for she could not love Christ without loving the whole 
cause for which he lived, the whole Church of which he 
is the Head, and the whole world for which he died. 
But, thus far, it was enough to know that she could give 
everything for the Divine Being in whom all these move- 
ments and reformations centre. There are times when 
the particular must make way and give place to the gen- 
eral. The Messiah says, very strikingly, and in this con- 
nection : " The poor ye have always with you, and when- 
soever ye will, ye may do them good ; but me," in the 
body, " ye have not always. She is come aforehand to 
anoint my body to the burying. She hath wrought a 
good work on me." " Her gift," he seems to add, " is 



140 



ACCEPTANCE OF THE HEART. 



an unconscious embalming before my agony. These 
most sacred impulses of divine reverence are greater 
than any common almsgivings. Let each have its due. 
Whoso loveth me will love my poor, and serve them in 
the time and place. Let the heart be fastened personally 
on me as a living Redeemer, and Christian duties will 
soon fall into their order, and abound." 

The wisdom of the plan of the mediation, in thus giv- 
ing intensity and personality to our religious affections, 
just suits itself to our natural wants. You are familiar 
with precisely the feeling that drove this woman to bring 
her box of ointment, provided you have ever had that 
mingled sense of gratitude and love toward a person 
which made you long, above all things, to find out some 
way of serving him, and made it a positive pain to be 
denied that privilege. Such are the reality and the su- 
premacy of personal relationships and bonds. A relig- 
ion that did not provide ample room for their exercise, by 
showing us the Divine perfection under human condi- 
tions, would lack as much a practical hold on human 
sympathies, as it would a philosophical adaptation to the 
exigencies of the moral problem. 

III. Further, Christ's words of defence for the woman 
against the disaffected by-standers affirm, for true good- 
ness, a complete independence of place. It is a familiar 
maxim, among Christian didactics, that acceptance with 
God is as possible in small fortunes, or limited reputa- 
tions, as where power carries with it a commensurate in- 
fluence, and the object of many popular regards is sup- 
posed to be a favorite with Heaven. And yet, so much 
is our judgment controlled by appearances, that we are 
constantly falling back under the old fallacy. This plain 
saying of Jesus strikes every illusion away. " She hath 



ACCEPTANCE OF THE HEART. 



141 



done what she could," How much is covered by that 
M could," we do not inquire. Not more, probably, than 
lies in the power of every one of us at this moment. Yet 
it was enough. Then neither is there one of us that is 
excusable from the full requirement of Christ's word, nor 
is there one to whom the whole infinite wealth of his 
favor is not offered. 

I confess that I sometimes distrust the effect , of fre- 
quent references to those persons who have been led into 
places of large and prominent usefulness, in any walk of 
philanthropy. As instances of signal energy, self-sacri- 
fice, and constancy, they stand as noble examples of 
what humanity may accomplish. And, as I believe the 
admiration of even distant greatness to be a wholesome 
emotion, I thank God for such illustrious heroes and 
martyrs. But we misuse them greatly if we ever allow 
ourselves to feel that theirs is the only true way of being 
great, and that, because we cannot serve God or man in 
some such famous mode, we will retire from the field. 
That is sheer unbelief. We ought to know that the sen- 
tence, " She hath done what she could," is just as suffi- 
cient and. adequate for the ablest as the most infirm ; that 
it is enough for such as Elizabeth Fry, Hannah More, 
and Madame Adorna, and no more than enough for the 
unlettered woman carried out from an obscure lane last 
week, having died in the joy of her Lord, and her name 
never seen in printed letters, perhaps, till it was enrolled 
in the record of the dead. When I read a description of 
Kaiserswerth, near Diisseldorf on the Rhine, — of that 
vast establishment of Christian mercy, with its hospi- 
tal, insane asylum, Magdalen retreat, charity schools, and 
institutions for training the most scientific nurses and 
accomplished teachers, graduating superintendents for 



142 



ACCEPTANCE OF THE HEART. 



the humane houses of both Europe and America, and a 
few miles away another building for the rest and refresh- 
ment of those that have been worn down by the fatigues 
of these voluntary labors of love, — when I see how, 
throughout, charity has been systematized by skill, and 
benevolence perfected by perseverance, and then behold 
the benefits flowing forth to be extended and multiplied, 
in ever enlarging proportions, over the whole sick and suf- 
fering and groaning earth, — I am as much abashed and 
humbled before this devoted Pastor Fleidner, whose active 
spirit and benevolent genius have called up all this busy 
and organized kingdom of Good-Samaritanism about 
him to glorify the age, as I suppose my sisters are before 
the beautiful and accomplished baroness who has laid 
down youth, rank, and wealth as an offering to sorrow 
and disease ; or before the high-born, gifted, and admired 
English girl * who came to Kaiserswerth as a pupil, and 
then reproduced the same wonders of consolation and 
healing for sick and destitute governesses, — not amidst 
the rural quiet and sweet verdure of her own paternal 
home in Hampshire, but in a dismal street in London. 
Yet we ought all to remember that these too only did 
what they could ; that, if we do that, God's honors are 
impartial ; that if we do not that, then ours is indeed the 
shame of the short-coming. And when we follow this 
last-mentioned minister of angelic mercy on the horrid 
and bloody path of war to the banks of the Bosphorus, 
and read how, in the hospital of Scutari, 

" Through miles of pallets, thickly laid 
With sickness in its foulest guise, 
And pain, in forms to have dismayed 
Man's science-hardened eyes, 



* Florence Nightingale. 



ACCEPTANCE OF THE HEART. 



143 



A woman, fragile, pale, and tall, 
Upon her saintly work doth more, 
Fair or not fair, who knows 1 but all 
Follow her face with love," — 

while I bow with reverent confession before this tran- 
scendent realized vision of celestial pity, I still believe we 
ought not to forget that God may have, that he asks, 
that he requires of us that there shall be, servants of his 
love as self-denying, as heroic, as resolute, of whom hos- 
pital never knew and poetry never sang, right here in 
these homely houses and these prosaic streets. For the 
hour will come when every soul that hath done what that 
soul could, shall be seen on the right hand of the throne 
of God. 

IV. Again, Christ's encomium on the affectionate 
Mary announces the great principle, that ability is the 
measure of responsibility. No soul is tasked beyond its 
power. God's commandment never passes the line of a 
possible obedience, and so never goes over from justice 
to tyranny. But what we fail, through inability, to ren- 
der in actual work, he mercifully permits us, through 
Christ, to make up in those penitent and self-renouncing 
affections, which gain forgiveness, and open the way of 
reconciliation. If any one dreams this is a lax or easy 
rule, let him only ask himself, in a still and thoughtful 
hour, Have I done what I could ? Has my service to 
the Master reached the full measure of the powers and 
gifts, the capacities of affection and the opportunities of 
well-doing, with which my Master has intrusted me ? 

This language of the Saviour most naturally associates 
itself with the closing up of life's great account. Of how 
many among us, when that trial-hour comes, with all its 
retrospections and searching examinations, can those glo- 



144 



ACCEPTANCE OF THE HEART. 



rious words be spoken ? We cannot recall nor judge 
the dead. They are in the hands of the All-Just. But 
we can speak to one another as yet living. How many 
of us are so striving righteously, and watching soberly, 
and praying earnestly, that this shall be the just and 
consoling eulogy, — They have done what they could ? 
The busy man of affairs, the successful one, the disap- 
pointed and losing one, the young adventurer, the older 
and long trusted and finally unfortunate one, — those that 
have prospered by others' industry, and those that have 
been ruined by others' crimes, — has each one of them 
done what he could ? The wife or mother whose very 
name is sacred, because the sacred office of forming char- 
acter is her perpetual duty, the lonely woman that has 
only her own heart to discipline, the young girl that has 
so few cares for herself that God requires many of her 
for the less-favored, — has each done what she could ? 
The bereaved parent, the desolate widow suddenly sum- 
moned to take up the dreary and dreadful burden of soli- 
tary suffering, — has each done what she could ? is each 
one doing what she can ? Christ draws near to us, and 
repeats the question. He turns and puts it, with twofold 
solemnity and sadness, to those that leave him and pass 
away. To all that sit at his feet and follow in his steps 
in the spirit of her who poured the fragrant offering on 
his head, he is ready to speak the same benediction with 
his infinite love, — hiding in it the sure promise of life 
everlasting. 

I said we cannot adjudge the deservings of the de- 
parted. But we can guard ourselves against those hallu- 
cinations of mortal glory, and all those artificial illusions, 
which are so apt to cheat our souls, and obscure the plain 
truth we have been meditating. There goes to his au- 



ACCEPTANCE OF THE HEART. 



145 



gust repose, enveloped in imperial pomps, the ruler of the 
world's mightiest, vastest empire. Fifty-seven millions 
of human souls, embracing nine different races of men, 
with a million soldiers, drew their daily breath subject 
to his direct and despotic will ; but not all of so many 
millions could add one single breath to his prostrate 
lungs. Eight millions of square miles of territory were 
yesterday ruled by his word ; now he needs not eight feet, 
out of it all. The guns of massive fortresses on the huge 
ramparts that guard widely divided waters made a conti- 
nent tremble in their volleying answers to his edicts, and 
the haughtiest noblemen of the world bent at his smile 
or frown. Common cabinets and kings were perplexed 
and afraid at the cunning of his brain, as boys are of 
their master, and the armies of the strongest governments, 
after his own, felt the globe to be a more conquerable 
and practicable domain, the moment they knew he was 
dead. But he is dead. And neither the millions of 
acres nor men, the fortresses nor the fears, the armies 
nor the brain, shall make it a whit easier, but harder 
rather, for his single soul — when it goes alone, disrobed 
of crown and purple, into the presence of the King of 
kings whose right it is to reign — to answer that simple 
question, Hast thou done for me — ah ! for me — what 
thou couldst? Canst thou stand with the lowly and 
powerless woman who crept with the box of ointment to 
her Redeemer's feet, and who shall have the story of that 
act of love told for a memorial of her wherever the ever- 
lasting Gospel is preached, when the history of Cossack 
and Czar shall be dim as that of princes before the flood, 
and on to the end of time ? 

But here, close by us, falls asleep a meek, patient girl, 
— a faithful sister, an obedient daughter, a mild and 

13 



146 



ACCEPTANCE OF THE HEART. 



friendly counsellor of a few children that she knew, ruLr 
of none on earth but her own patient spirit, and thereby 
made greater than he that taketh a city, or prevents its 
being taken. She too dies, and no anxious hemispheres 
dispute about the report, nor do kingdoms mourn nor 
cowardly assemblies clap their hands, when the report is 
confirmed. And in the day when the secrets of all hearts 
shall be revealed, our only question is, which of these 
two shall be found nearest to Him who sitteth on the one 
throne, and shall wear the crown which is a crown of life. 

There seem to be three thoughts that offer themselves 
to us, to be carried away as the practical substance of 
the subject. 

One is, that this saying of Jesus is dangerously per- 
verted and shamefully abused, if we take it as excusing 
us from the utmost effort in well-doing, and a laborious 
progress in Christ's service. The whole tone of our New 
Testament religion is searching and high. It allows no 
laxities, and no apologies. It is satisfied with nothing 
less than entire consecration. The piety it asks is both 
active and ardent, warm and constant, ever burning and 
ever advancing. It summons into the Master's service 
every power, every energy, every affection, every hour of 
life. The very words of the text imply a strict and com- 
prehensive judgment. For which one of us could truly 
say to-day, I have done what I could ? 

The second practical lesson is, that, in order to serve 
Christ acceptably, we have not to revolutionize our lot, 
nor to seek other conditions than those Providence 
supplies. The place is nothing ; the heart is all. Cham- 
bers of patient invalids, beds of submissive sickness, ob- 
scurity, weakness, baffled plans, — a thousand nameless 
limitations of faculty, of opportunity, of property, — all 



ACCEPTANCE OF THE HEART. 



147 



these are witnesses of silent but victorious faith. In all 
of them God is glorified, for in all of them his will is 
done. Out of all of them gates open into heaven and 
the joy of the Lord. Mercifully the Father has ap- 
pointed many ways in which we may walk toward his 
face, and run on his errands. Work is the way for 
strength ; lying still is the way for infirmity, if only there 
are trust and prayer in both. There is some instruction 
in a picture I have read of, which represents the lives of 
twin-brothers diverging from the cradle. One, by study, 
becomes a learned and skilful physician, reaching great 
riches and honors by ministering to the sick. The other 
has no talent for books, and no memory, and so no sci- 
ence ; he becomes a poor, strolling musician, but spends 
his days in consoling, by his lute, sufferings that are 
beyond all medicine. The brothers are shown meeting 
at the close of their career. The vagrant is sick and 
worn out, and the brother prescribes for him out of his 
learning, and gathers ingenious compounds for his re- 
lief ; but meantime, he to whom God gave another 
gift touches his instrument for the solace of the great 
man's shattered nerves, and heals his benefactor's disor- 
dered spirit. 

Finally, there is no service thoroughly right which 
does not directly acknowledge and honor the Saviour. 
The heart's offering to him is the beginning of all right- 
eousness. He who knoweth our frame has ordained that 
our spiritual life shall grow strong and earnest, just in 
proportion as our personal affections and faith centre in 
the living Saviour, who manifests the Father unto the 
world. We must touch his garment, sit at his feet, lean 
upon his cross. So we are made. We may wonder at 
the way, but we adore it, in our deeper experience, none 



148 



ACCEPTANCE OF THE HEART. 



the less. The want of nature our Redeemer blessedly 
supplies. There is no other name given among men 
whereby we can be saved. And it is they who do what 
they can out of love for him that have the joy of hear- 
ing, in his own voice, " Thy faith hath saved thee ; go in 
peace." 



SERMON XI. 



WOMAN'S POSITION. 

YET IS SHE THY COMPANION. — Mai. ii. 14. 

The main proposition is, that, for the wrongs and dis- 
advantages of woman's present social and civil condition, 
Christianity offers the only true relief. 

Recent measures and discussions have so put upon 
this topic a new aspect, and surrounded it with new as- 
sociations, that it can hardly be opened, even in a sermon, 
without some reference to their tendency. I shall advert 
to these the more willingly, because they involve consid- 
erations that lie directly in the course of our inquiry. A 
statement of the main principles affecting them can be 
compressed into a brief compass. 

The problem of modern speculation, in regard to 
woman, is to define and secure her rights. Rights imply 
wrongs : a reform implies abuses. The allegation is, 
that, hitherto, civilized society has abridged woman's free- 
dom, restricted her faculties, and doubted her capacity. 
The charge — with the outward demonstrations, such as 
conventions and treatises, through which it manifests it- 
self — -has this significance, that it discovers a spreading 
conviction in the minds of the people, that woman is not 
yet fulfilling her whole work in the social economy ; which 

13* 



150 



woman's position. 



I hold to be a very interesting fact, worthy of much con- 
sideration. But it also takes an unfortunate form ; be- 
cause, not content with asserting her legitimate preroga- 
tives, and challenging a fair field for their exercise, it 
attaches an unphilosophical importance to certain out- 
ward and subordinate particulars ; lodging the difficulty 
where it does not belong, and confusedly mixing together 
a hostile demand, on the part of women, for being what 
men are, with a righteous aspiration for making them- 
selves what women were intended to be. 

After all, the question resolves itself into one of inten- 
tion and constitution. Were man and woman designed 
by creation for the same kinds of service, endowed with 
the same mental aptitudes, and fitted for the same spe- 
cies of success and distinction ? or were they not ? If 
the history of their formation teaches anything ; if the 
facts laid open by daily experience prove anything ; if 
organization reveals anything ; if that law of the Divine 
operations, by which different contrivances imply a vari- 
ety of purposes, establishes anything, — they were not. 

If, now, we proceed to ask, what the grand mental 
or moral distinction is, and what the peculiar endow- 
ments of each are, we find ourselves obliged to speak 
only in very general terms ; for the attributes in which 
they differ are shaded off into other attributes in which 
they are alike. Every woman possesses many mental 
characteristics in common with man ; every man has 
some feminine traits. Employ any classification of the 
powers of the mind you please, and you find every fac- 
ulty represented in both man and woman, — understand- 
ing and will, consciousness and perception, abstraction 
and imagination, love and hate, fear and fortitude, desire 
and aversion ; for they are both human. Nature makes 



woman's position. 



151 



" a female Newton and a male siren." The difference, 
then, must be in the differing degrees and proportions in 
which these faculties are mixed. One combination of 
them, so commonly found as to form a rule, constitutes 
the interior character of one sex ; another combination, of 
another. Now, the real relative rights of each of the 
sexes are settled, when each enjoys an opportunity of un- 
folding and exercising its own peculiar character, which- 
ever it may be, suffering' no obstruction or interference 
from the other. 

Bearing in mind this explanation, it may be asserted, 
without offence, that the distinguishing faculty of man is 
mental concentration ; that of woman, moral impulse. 
Woman is the representative of affection; man, of 
thought. Woman carries her strength in her heart; 
man, in his head. Neither one monopolizes the special 
department ; but, by eminence, he is intellect, — she is 
love. 

What is the reason some of us are not quite satisfied, 
in woman's behalf, with this discrimination ? Simply 
because so many of us — men and women both — still 
labor under the old unchristian heresy, that the heart is 
inferior to the head, and that a strong intellect is more 
to be honored than a good spirit. But for this heathen- 
ish mistake, woman would ascend instantly into her 
rightful superiority in the scale of human dignities. 

The mistake appears first in the unprincipled vanity of 
man. He stands, with his stout arms and executive 
will, and says superciliously to the woman: " It is enough 
for you to be good : leave power to me. Content your- 
self with your moral dominion ; practise your humble 
virtues as you are bid ; and I will rule the world as I 
please. Keep my house ; mend my clothes ; cook my 



152 



woman's position. 



food ; see that I am comfortable ; and give me a quiet life. 
Be thankful that your obscure situation does not expose 
you to the fierce temptations that beset my more splen- 
did career ; and accept a slave's security as an offset for 
the slave's humiliation." This man allows her moral pre- 
eminence ; but he teaches her, and flatters himself, that 
far above this pre-eminence towers that ability of his 
own which makes money, speeches, or reputation. It is 
the same selfish arrogance that prompted the great Greek 
tragedian to say, in one of his chief productions, " Better 
a thousand women should persish, than that one man 
should cease to see the light." Traces of the same con- 
temptible feeling are seen in the literature of later ages, 
especially in periods of corrupt morals and general scep- 
ticism, as well as in the patronizing manners with which 
vile men fawn on women, with base flatteries, in their 
presence, and sneer at their virtue, or exult over the scan- 
dals of their frailty, with one another. We have not yet 
quite attained even to that rudimentary truth, that £< wo- 
men are not born merely that men might not be lonely, 
but are in themselves possessors of immortal souls." 

The same mistake appears in ambitious woman her- 
self, when, instead of accepting this her glorious distinc- 
tion, and wearing it as the unrivalled honor, she longs 
impatiently for some more pompons but ignobler fame. 
The reason she feels herself insulted by the theory, that 
man represents the head, and she the heart, — as if some 
advantage were thereby referred to man, — is because 
she is not yet thoroughly a Christian ; is not willing to 
acknowledge that the heart is greater, nobler, wiser than 
the head, goodness than mere intellect, love than logic, 
purity than eloquence, holy living than able reasoning. 
She lingers still under the old barbarous error which sets 



WOMAN S POSITION. 



153 



Napoleon above Howard, Byron over Wesley, Mary 
Wolstone craft over Sarah Martin, and a wicked orator 
over a working saint. Herein we are all still stumbling 
among the elements, disloyal to that Gospel which is a 
dispensation to the affections. It is a delusion — lodged 
so deep in human judgments that it will be the last to 
be dispossessed by the triumphant banners of the cross — 
that the strong brain is nobler than the meek and lowly 
spirit; that they who "seek after a sign," or "require 
wisdom," and not the " pure in heart," " shall see God." 
Woman commits the same error, when, in the choice of 
her models for imitation from her own sex, she prefers the 
brilliancy of Madame de Stael to the calm excellence of 
Elizabeth Hamilton ; envies Lady Blessington, or even 
Madame Dudevant, above Mrs. Barbauld ; and, in her 
heart, would rather have Jenny Lind Goldschmidt's fame, 
genius, and admiration, than her charity. Still more 
grossly does she err — because she then ruins her self-re- 
spect and her social and moral independence — when she 
shows it to be, or suffers it to be, the first doctrine of her 
practical catechism, that the chief end of woman is to be 
married to a man. 

Is it nothing for woman to remember, when her sex is 
made the type and tabernacle of Love, that we have as- 
cribed the loftiest glory even to the Almighty Father 
when we have said that his name is Love ? Is it noth- 
ing to her that her place in society and her powers in the 
world correspond to her character ? that while she shares 
with man, in honorable and often equal measure, certainly 
in these modern times, every intellectual privilege, liter- 
ary accomplishment, and public function, — authorship, 
the chair of science, the throne of state, — she yet has a 
realm all her own, sacred to her peculiar ministry, where 



154 



woman's position. 



she reigns by a still diviner right ? Is it nothing that it is 
her face which first bends over the breathing child, looks 
into his eyes, welcomes him to life, steadies his uncer- 
tain feet until they walk firmly on the planet ? Suppose 
man were the natural enemy of woman ; consider that 
from his birth, for the first ten years of his life, he is put 
into her hands, with scarcely a reservation or exception, 
to be impressed, moulded, fashioned into what she will, 
— so that, if he were born a wild tiger, her benignity 
would have its opportunity to tame him ; consider that 
it has been historically demonstrated that scarcely a sin- 
gle hero, reformer, statesman, saint, or sage, has ever 
come to influence or adorn his age, from Jacob to Wash- 
ington, who was not reared by a remarkable mother that 
shaped his mind ; and then ask whether it is not equal 
folly for woman to claim the name of power, and for 
man to deny her the possession. 

The genius of controversy never evoked from the 
iC vasty deep " of free discussion a more infelicitous 
spirit, nor achieved a more unprofitable issue, than when 
it opened the unnatural question of the comparative 
merits of the sexes ; and for the reason, that the whole 
design and constitution of their being, the law of their 
mutual relation, and the primitive providential distinc- 
tion in their respective functions, make every such com- 
parison an impertinence. The first record of God's 
creative act — "male and female created he them" — 
ought to have foreclosed for ever this worse than fratri- 
cidal strife. Whichever way the controversy should be 
decided, the decision would be wrong. Comparative 
merits of man and woman ! There are no terms in 
which such a comparison can be drawn. You might 
as well inquire which of any two of the great essential 



woman's position. 



155 



elements of existence, or laws of matter, or faculties of 
mind, could best be spared ; you might as well ask, re- 
specting any of those grand dualities between which 
the sublime order of nature is poised, and unity is pre- 
served, which member of the equation is most impor- 
tant ; you might as well debate the comparative merits 
of spring and autumn, of morning and evening, of oxy- 
gen and hydrogen, of the bones and the blood, of mem- 
ory and hope, of the centripetal and centrifugal attrac- 
tions. Each holds its title by the ordaining of a divine 
plan ; and the displacement of either from its sphere 
would be a resolution of the whole system into chaos. 
The whole controversy is a monstrous absurdity, con- 
ceived in a miserable jealousy, prosecuted by an in- 
sane insurrection against good manners, and sure to 
end in nothing but a profane putting asunder of what 
God has married together. " Yet she is thy compan- 
ion." 

But the question forces itself back, whether, in the 
civilization of the past, woman has found a fair and 
equal chance for the development of the powers God has 
intrusted peculiarly to her, as man has found for the de- 
velopment of those granted peculiarly to him. Mani- 
festly she has not. And here we find the special dig- 
nity conferred upon her by Christianity ; here appears 
her chief indebtedness to Christ. Just as fast as that 
new spiritual ministry has made itself felt on human 
institutions, her real rights have been recognized. So 
it will be more and more : as the day of Christian sun- 
light broadens, the horizon of her appropriate duties will 
expand. Nor is there any danger, so long as religion 
guides her progress, that there will be any confusion of 
claims, or crossing of lines, between her loftier offices 



156 woman's position. 

and the humbler and rougher tasks of her muscular com- 
panion, — man. 

In the pagan antiquity, woman was hopelessly de- 
graded by polygamy, as she still is under the Oriental 
barbarisms, and in savage society generally. A rigorous 
seclusion, dictated by jealous passions, shuts her in from 
all free opportunities of ennobling influence and all the 
dignity of usefulness. The imperious will of her des- 
potic lord imprisons her spirit, as the harem does her 
body. And it must be confessed that, in some of our 
houses in Christendom, the spirit of these gross wrongs, 
if not their form, is renewed by selfish and vulgar hus- 
bands, who would rather find in their wives a toy for 
idle hours, an animal pleasure, or a pride from the ad- 
miration they command in assemblies, than an impulse 
to their own intellects, a benignant influence drawing 
them out of their worldliness, or a guardian to their vir- 
tue. These are the houses where Christianity may be a 
name, but has not come in renewing power. The in- 
mates are Turks or Hindoos still. 

It is true, in some of the more refined of the old na- 
tions of the East, a few examples appeared where wo- 
man escaped these restrictions on her freedom. Plato, 
in his " Divine Dialogues," introduces a maxim, which, 
by implication, renders a worthy tribute to woman, to 
the effect, that whatever was most excellent in the state 
must always begin at the fireside. But too often, like 
Aspasia, Sappho, Helen, and Cleopatra, she gained both 
her liberty and her celebrity at the expense of her mod- 
esty. The alternative lay between obscurity and effron- 
tery. The rare names that stand altogether above re- 
proach in the ancient literature — names that classical 
veneration repeats with enthusiasm till to-day — were 



woman's position. 



157 



generally the ideal creations of some poet's or artist's 
fancy, rather than actual women dwelling in flesh and 
blood. In the Roman empire, as in the Greek oligarchy, 
when woman emerged from her state of abject servitude, 
it was only to take a share in the impure ceremonies and 
dances of an idolatrous worship, and thus to pass forth 
upon the theatre of a voluptuous publicity. The heathen 
religions had no word to raise woman to her true equal- 
ity with man ; and, by consequence, the woman and the 
man and the religions must needs sink together into de- 
struction. 

The introduction of Christianity formed the grand 
epoch in the condition of woman. But even Christian 
ideas did not spring full-grown into history ; and so the 
elevation of female character to its true rank has been 
gradual. How it was originally regarded, by the pure 
spirit of the New Testament, certainly admits no doubt. 
The spiritual insight of Jesus saw that the readiest and . 
clearest reception of his heavenly doctrine was in the 
heart of woman. "With what dignified tenderness he 
always saluted her ! The hospitalities of the sisters at 
Bethany ; the tears and ointment of Mary Magdalen ; 
the dying looks and immortal blessings bestowed on 
those that were u last at the cross, and earliest at the 
grave " ; the honorable offices of charitable ministration 
assigned to females in the Apostolic Church, — all these 
were only fit proofs of the estimation in which that 
Saviour held woman, who was to be, down through all 
future ages, the unfailing refuge of her spirit, the com- 
panion of her solitude, the rest of her weariness, the com- 
passionator of her frailty, the comforter of her pain. By 
its indestructible reverence for the virgin mother of our 
Lord, the Christian Church has not only woven into its 

14 



158 



woman's position. 



sentiments a new idea of woman, but it has done some- 
thing to cancel the contempt that was thrown upon her 
in the person of Eve, the seduced of Satan. If woman 
was the first in the world to sin, it was on her breast also 
that its Redeemer was nourished; and Bethlehem has 
atoned for Eden. Abating its superstitious excesses, 
the homage paid to the Madonna is a consecration of 
womanhood quite becoming a religion that displaced 
paganism, and condemns sensuality. 

Since the primitive age of the Church, however, the 
condition of woman has shared in the slow progress of 
religious ideas generally. Civilization has never more 
than partially realized Christianity. But the advance 
has been steady. The greatest hinderance it has ex- 
perienced was in an institution which superficial judg- 
ments have often instanced as promoting it, — the chiv- 
alry of the Middle Ages. The honor paid by knight- 
errantry to woman was a false honor. The hollow com- 
plaisance of the courtier covered a low style of morals ; 
and the romance of chivalry was rather the flattering 
gallantry of passion, than an honest and substantial rec- 
ognition of woman's actual worth. It is this chivalry 
that has too much given law and fashion to the relation 
of the sexes ever since, — substituting the forms of ef- 
feminate courtesy for sterling respect, and bringing in 
that foolish style of manners where women are fawned 
upon with empty compliments and polite nothings, in- 
stead of being frankly met with intelligence, good sense, 
and genuine deference. 

The next great impulse was given to female culture 
when the Saxon element began to be felt in history, and 
out of the old German forests came forth those stanch 
hearts and heroic hands that were thenceforth to rule the 



woman's position. 



159 



destinies of Christendom. They were true respecters ol 
woman. They were the first people that, independently 
of Christianity, rendered to her her natural rights. They 
made her a companion, a counsellor, a confidante, — not 
a servant, a mistress, nor a doll. And when Christianity 
came and grafted its heavenly spirit on that noble stock, 
new examples began to be witnessed of female capacity 
and character. The Church was never, indeed, with- 
out its female saints and heroines ; though only a few 
names, like those of Theresa, Catharine Adorna, Madame 
Guyon, and Joan of Arc, have travelled down to us from 
the Catholic ages. Protestantism has its higher illus- 
trations of dauntless courage, genius, and piety, in let- 
ters, art, and philanthropy, from such as Lady Russell 
and Hannah More, Dorothy Dix and Elizabeth Fry, 
Frederika Bremer and Hannah Adams, Harriet Newell 
and Mary Ware. It is unquestionable, that loftier and 
more abundant examples of high-hearted womanhood 
are living to-day, than in any hour of history before. 

Accordingly, as we should expect, there is hardly a 
walk of public or private life where female talent is not 
heartily honored, and does not command its deserved 
success. The fine arts, the sciences, classical learning, 
social reform, philosophy, education, empire, — all are 
represented at this day by accomplished women. Do 
they suffer detriment, or loss of influence, because they 
are women ? Is Mrs. Somerville, or Miss Mitchell, less 
esteemed among the scientific minds of the age for her 
sex ? Does not the whole British kingdom learn a 
heightened regard for woman from the womanly char- 
acter it beholds in its queen ? Is there a department of 
knowledge from which woman is now, by our modern 
systems of education, shut out ? Must it not be very 

i 



160 



woman's position. 



soon true that her power shall be proportioned to her 
energy, and her influence be measured only by her 
merit? Probably the larger proportion of scholarship 
and public enterprise will still be with men, — the 
providential constitution of the sexes justifies that ex- 
pectation ; but when exceptions appear, the demand of 
Christian liberty is, that they be welcomed, recognized, 
and rewarded. 

Some disabilities, however, still accrue to woman, es- 
pecially in respect to property, and just payment for her 
labor. Tasks that she is fully competent to every way, 
public opinion and false custom will not let her do, 
cruelly telling her she shall sooner starve ; and for work 
that she actually does as well and as rapidly as her com- 
panion, man, she receives only a quarter of his wages ; 
both of which are wrongs that Christianity rebukes as 
clearly as it does slavery or defalcation, and wrongs that 
Christian men must speedily remedy, or else cease to be 
Christians, and well-nigh cease to be men. Already they 
are partly remedied, in countries otherwise less advanced 
than our own, by protection granted to woman in em- 
ployments that sustain her independence and shield her 
virtue. 

A darker wrong yet is strangely done to woman by 
that obstinate and most unrighteous judgment of men, 
which, not satisfied that she should sustain all the se- 
verer agonies that attend the perpetuating of the race, 
insists on extending a vile toleration to the WTetch who 
ruins her virtue and robs her of her peace, passing over 
his " deep damnation " as a venial thing ; while it mer- 
cilessly dooms and casts off the Magdalens, barring every 
gate against then return to purity. 

What, then, briefly, in respect to woman's social posi- 



woman's position. 



161 



tion amongst us, as it is, — her rights and her power, — 
are her own immediate duties, and those of man in her 
behalf? 

First, of man's. Let him learn to be grateful to wo- 
man for this undoubted achievement of her sex, that it is 
she — she far more than he, and she too often in despite 
of him — who has kept Christendom from lapsing back 
into barbarism, — kept mercy and truth from being ut- 
terly overborne by those two greedy monsters, money 
and war. Let him be grateful for this, that almost every 
great soul that has led forward or lifted up the race has 
been furnished for each noble deed, and inspired with 
each patriotic and holy aspiration, by the retiring forti- 
tude of some Spartan, or more than Spartan, — some 
Christian mother. Moses, the deliverer of his people, 
drawn out of the Nile by the king's daughter, some one 
has hinted, is only a symbol of the way that woman's 
better instincts always outwit the tyrannical diplomacy 
of man. Let him cheerfully remember, that, though the 
sinewy sex achieves enterprises on public theatres, it is 
the nerve and sensibility of the other that arm the mind 
and inflame the soul in secret. " A man discovered 
America ; but a woman equipped the voyage." So 
everywhere : man executes the performance ; but woman 
trains the man. Every effectual person, leaving his mark 
on the world, is but another Columbus, for whose fur- 
nishing some Isabella, in the form of his mother, lays 
down her jewelry, her vanities, her comfort. 

Above all, let not men practise on woman the perpet- 
ual and shameful falsehood of pretending admiration 
and acting contempt. Let them not exhaust their kind- 
ness in adorning her person, and ask in return the humil- 
iation of her soul. Let them not assent to her every 

14* 



woman's position. 



opinion, as if she were not strong enough to maintain it 
against opposition ; nor yet manufacture opinion for her, 
and force it on to her lips by dictation. Let them not 
crucify her emotions, nor ridicule her frailty, nor crush 
her individuality, nor insult her dependence, nor play off 
mean jests upon her honor in convivial companies, nor 
bandy unclean doubts of her, as a wretched substitute 
for wit, nor whisper vulgar suspicions of her purity, 
which, as compared with their own, is like the immacu- 
late whiteness of angels. Let them remember, that for 
the ghastly spectacle of her blasted chastity they are 
answerable. Let them multiply her social advantages, 
enhance her dignity, minister to her intelligence, and, by 
manly gentleness, be the champions of her genius, the 
friends of her fortunes, and the equals, if they can, of her 
heart. And if any man is tempted to that meanest of 
unmanly tricks, — making a woman his wife that he 
may buy for himself, by a husband's name, riches or so- 
cial standing or popular favor, — let him take the spirited 
advice of a true woman-poet to Prince Albert at his 
wedding : — 

" Esteem that wedded hand less dear for sceptre than for ring ; 
And hold her uncrowned womanhood to be the royal thing/' 

Be the husband the " head of the wife," not as despot or 
voluptuary, but in that holier headship signified by the 
Apostle, as Christ is the Head of his Church. " Yet is 
she thy companion." 

And, finally, of woman's duties for herself. For the 
wrongs that remain to her position, and the disabilities 
that man's too selfish and partially Christianized nature 
has not yet removed, let her not, in the name of all that 
is lovely and all that is skilful, go to separatist conven- 



woman's position. 



163 



tions, nor to the platform, nor to novel schemes of politi- 
cal economy or social re-organization ; but to that moral 
tribunal, where she is as sure to win her cause at last as 
the sunlight is to compel a summer. Let her take up 
and wield the spiritual sovereignty that is her everlasting 
birthright. Let her understand — what so few of her 
sex have been willing to learn to this hour — the power 
lodged in her whole spirit and voice and look and action 
for or against the kingdom of Heaven. Let her be con- 
tent with the possession and exercise of power, in all its 
higher forms, without that appendage which unhallowed 
pride is for ever insisting on, — the name of it. Let her 
unfold every nobler faculty that our imperfect social state 
invites ; and then be sure that the social state will ripen 
into more perfect humanities, and full justice come at 
last. Let her be the brave domestic advocate of every 
virtue, the silent but effectual reformer of every vice, the 
unflinching destroyer of falsehood, the generous patroness 
of intelligence, the watcher by slandered innocence, the 
guardian of childhood, the minister of Heaven to home, 
the guide of orphans, the sister of the poor, the disciple 
of Christ's holy Church. On Jesus of Nazareth, — all 
fails except for this, — on the Saviour's heart, let her 
rest her unchangeable and unassailable hope, her unques- 
tioning trust, her unconquerable love. 

For then shall man and woman be fellow-helpers to 
the truth ; marriage, the pure sacrament of a spiritual 
faith ; and families on earth, humbler branches of the 
great family of heaven. 



SERMON XII. 



THE CHRISTIAN WOMAN. 

WHOSE ADORNING, LET IT NOT BE THAT OUTWARD ADORNING 
OF PLAITING THE HAIR, AND OF WEARING OF GOLD, OR OF 
PUTTING ON OF APPAREL ; BUT LET IT BE THE HIDDEN MAN 
OF THE HEART, IN THAT WHICH IS NOT CORRUPTIBLE, EVEN 
THE ORNAMENT OF A MEEK AND QUIET SPIRIT, WHICH IS IN 
THE SIGHT OF GOD OF GREAT PRICE. FOR AFTER THIS MAN- 
NER, IN THE OLD TIME, THE HOLY WOMEN ALSO, WHO TRUST- 
ED IN GOD, ADORNED THEMSELVES. 1 Peter iii. 3-5. 

The views presented in the preceding Discourse on the 
social and moral position of women lead on to some fur- 
ther contemplation of her character as matured and en- 
riched by Christ. My doctrine will be that woman can 
realize her proper ministry only as she is inspired by 
Christian faith, and that she can find the solace so sorely 
needed by her discipline only as she enthrones the relig- 
ion of the Son of Mary as the supreme principle of her 
life. 

Let our thoughts be guided by this twofold proposi- 
tion: — 1. For the unfolding of woman's character, and 
the balancing of her spirit, Christianity supplies the only 
sufficient impulse and guide. 2. Christianity exhibits no 
more perfect illustration or achievement than in the com- 
pleted proportions of her spiritual life. Let us follow 



THE CHRISTIAN WOMAN. 



165 



her through the three principal stages in the solemn ca- 
reer of her womanhood, to see how helpless she is in 
every one, except she leans on Jesus, the friend of Mary 
and Martha. 

The first epoch of trial in woman's life begins when 
the period of education ceases. It encompasses a re- 
served, but always an intense, and sometimes a tragic 
experience. Hitherto, except in cases of rare misfortune 
and bleak exposure, her home, parents, and that shield 
of childhood's innocence which no serpent and no demon 
dare assail, have sheltered her. Now she steps forth, if 
not into the fierceness of public temptation, at least into 
the path of solitary and secret struggles, — bitternesses 
of spirit which pride and modesty both press back un- 
spoken into the enduring but inexperienced heart. 

I envy not that man's sensibility, nor do I credit his 
manliness, who treats these things as only the flimsy sen- 
timentalities of a girlish fancy. I think there are gath- 
ered into those few years that intervene between the 
busy hours of the school-room and the sober cares of the 
family terrible conflicts of the moral nature, questions 
of duty, tossings of conscience, weariness of patience, 
quenchings of the spirit, buffetings and resurrections of 
holy aspiration, of a meaning deep and solemn enough 
to impress any earnest mind. 

It is a period of dependence, in the first place, with 
most women ; and who does not know that trials He hid 
in that word " dependence " ? — dependence on parents, 
to be sure, often, not always, — but still not the less irk- 
some for that, if the woman, with a consciousness of 
strength, sees the parent worn and anxious with excess 
of labor ; or if, with willingness for effort which her posi- 
tion or social prejudice forbids, she sees her every want 



166 



THE CHRISTIAN WOMAN. 



met only by reluctant and grudged supplies. It is a pe- 
riod of uncertainty ; for it looks straight out upon all 
those contingencies that determine her future lot, — a 
lot for which she is not so much to lead or choose as to 
wait and weigh the perils of being chosen, or to learn the 
calm fortitude that conquers neglect with dignity. It is 
a period of highly-wrought sensibility. The emotions 
have swelled, from the babbling brook that kept its quiet 
way within the banks of youth, into the rushing river of 
impetuous passion. Opening vistas of gayety bewilder 
the eye. Overhanging shadows of disappointment alarm 
the soul. Sanguine expectations welcoming joy, and 
apprehensive instincts portending danger, divide the day 
and brood over the night. It is a period of comparative 
irresponsibleness ; and who shall say that irresponsible- 
ness is a blessing, when we know so well how occupa- 
tion dispels morbid introspections, and how daily strain 
upon the muscles fortifies timid and tremulous nerves ? 

I cannot agree with those superficial observers who 
see in the life of early womanhood no mOre than a care- 
less pastime, where nothing is so easy as to be happy, or 
read in its noiseless exterior an infallible sign of perfect 
peace within. Oh ! peace within ! It is not there ; but 
whence is it to come ? Must it be a stranger for ever to 
that agitated heart ? Must woman endure and strive 
and suffer, treading the wine-press of that comfortless 
solicitude, or that weary and discontented round of un- 
meaning trifles which is a still heavier curse, alone ? 
Must she walk that perilous way, withstanding flattery, 
bearing neglect, curbing complaint, bracing the nerves, 
masking tempests of feeling under an unchanged face, 
sifting sincerity from falsehood in the speech of men, and 
mastering gloomy meditations by voluntary activities, 



THE CHRISTIAN WOMAN. 



167 



alone ? Alone it must be in many cases, as respects the 
fulness of any mortal sympathy ; but not so alone, if she 
will have faith, as to exclude a companionship mightier 
and more blessed than the mortal. For such as she is, 
Christ died ; for such as she is, the Mediator lives ; for 
just that perplexed spirit Jesus says, " Come unto me, 
thou weary and heavy-laden! Let not your heart be 
troubled. This way, daughter ! Be of good comfort." 
For many a one who has not sinned as the weeping 
Mary sinned, but has sinned with the secret sin of the 
thoughts, and has sorrowed penitentially, or has feared 
lest sin should overtake her suddenly, and so has been 
ready to wash her Master's feet with tears, he is saying 
still, " Thy faith hath saved thee : go in peace." 

It is not true, I think, of any other condition of human 
discipline, more than of this one, that nothing short of a 
personal acquaintance with Christian trust can satisfy its 
wants. Two other and different resources, indeed, the 
young woman has ; and we need not wander far to 
search for proofs how often she tries their value. They 
are her womanly pride, and the excitements of society. 
The one tvill help her, so far as to a stubborn silence, a 
stoic strength, such as lurks often in the fragile feminine 
frame, which hides pain, but does not smother it, and dis- 
guises trouble with levity, but never consoles it. The 
other — social excitement — defers the hour of grief, but, 
while it puts it off, is gathering up additional material to 
intensify its visitation when it returns. At last, it dissi- 
pates self-respect, turns simplicity into affectation, and 
benumbs the moral sense. Whether these are satisfying 
comforters, is a question not for argument, but for testi- 
mony alone. Summon your evidence ; for you know 
where it is to be found. Perhaps you are witnesses 



168 



THE CHRISTIAN WOMAN. 



yourselves, and need only to call Memory to the stand, 
before the examinations of Conscience. 

What will Christianity do ? It concentrates the aim- 
less and restless purposes of woman on the one grand 
object of a personal acceptance with God. It takes off 
the load, which no human spirit can bear and be cheer- 
ful, by its promise of forgiveness for what is lacking, and 
by its encouraging assurance, that, when once the life is 
consecrated to God, no single act or thought of good can 
fail of fruit in the spiritual harvests of eternity. It offers 
her what the mind of youth more than anything else 
craves, — a friendship at once unchangeable and trust- 
worthy as the heavens ; and so it opens the gates of the 
city of God straight into her closet of prayer, and, when 
the world looks most inhospitable, shows her friendly an- 
gels ascending with her supplications, and descending 
with counsel and compassion, between her Bethel and 
her Father. It gives her that inward gift which none 
can see but by possessing it, and which had its best de- 
scription when it was said of it, by Him who knew its 
power, that it " passeth all understanding." More than 
this Christianity does for her. It provides for that sad 
deficiency in so many women's lives, — the want of some 
specific aim for undirected energies. No poet nor trage- 
dian nor artist has yet depicted the misery that comes of 
the cruel divorce between the active spirit of many a wo- 
man and its appropriate work. Religion leads her to her 
task, — the white field that her soft but resolute hand can 
reap. It not only quickens her to a new fidelity, in all 
the homely ministrations of the house where she lives, 
towards brothers and sisters, parents and servants ; it 
opens to her the lowly door of poverty ; it draws her, by 
cords stronger than steel, to the unclad orphan, and the 



THE CHRISTIAN WOMAN. 



169 



bedside of sick wretchedness ; it stimulates her inven- 
tion, it exhausts her economy, it plies her fingers, it in- 
spires her intercessions, for the instruction of poor chil- 
dren's ignorance, and the redemption of their despair. 
By a beautiful feature in the moral economy of the 
Church, no less than of nature, the mercies of life are 
assigned pre-eminently to female enterprise ; and, if 
Protestantism does not deserve to be converted back to 
Rome, the pity of her daughters will outwatch and out- 
labor the splendid benefactions of the Sisters of Char- 
ity. 

Another task still Christianity solemnly charges upon 
woman in her youth. It bids her by every separate obli- 
gation of her discipleship, be true to immaculate virtue, 
in her intercourse with companions, and in the bestow- 
ment of her favor. It not only surrounds her own person 
with the " sun-clad armor " of chastity and temperance 
and truth, but it commands her to exact the decencies of 
morality from every acquaintance, of either sex, that she 
honors with her intimacy. 

Would to God that some angel from his own right 
hand would reveal to her the power she controls for the 
redemption of those horrible vices that defile and intoxi- 
cate the land ! for then she might take up her benignant 
ministry as an apostle of holiness, persuading the tempted 
by her unbending principle, as well as bearing her own 
profession incorruptibly. Not that I would have young 
women trespass over the line of a most delicate propriety, 
in the hope of winning young men from dissipation by 
compromise or complaisance ; for I have had proofs too 
painful how the kindness of that generous benevolence 
may be outwitted and betrayed by the cowardly cunning 
of the voluptuary. But woman should awe vice every- 

15 



170 



THE CHRISTIAN WOMAN. 



where by the sternness of her disapproval, and the un- 
mistakableness of her language. 

Learn, women, as the Master beseeches you, that a di- 
vine trust is committed to you, in your example and your 
very smiles, for which God will call you into judgment. 
Know, as I know, that a trifling remark, falling from wo- 
man's thoughtless tongue in the whirl of some animating 
assembly, — extending her allowance to excess, treating 
sensuality as a venial error, or ridiculing strict virtue as a 
pmitanical scruple, — has been the feather's weight that 
turned the scale of a man's wavering character to infamy. 
Know, as I know, that your sober rebuke may carry the 
power of many sermons to the heart, and rescue a soul 
half lost, making you ministers of the cross. There is a 
record in the Hebrew history of a young maiden taken 
captive from the land of Israel, and made a servant in the 
house of Naaman, the illustrious captain of the king's 
host. The great man was smitten with leprosy, and 
could get no cure. The girl had courage to stand up 
against all the ridicule and obloquy of her despised relig- 
ion. She dared to be true to the God of her fathers, and 
to the prophets she had been taught from infancy to re- 
vere. She persisted in saying, " Would God my master 
were with the prophet that is in Samaria ! for he would 
recover him of his leprosy." At last, her faith conquered 
the Syrian's haughty prejudice; and he went down to 
Elisha, w r ashed in the Jordan, and was clean. There are 
leprosies on men's souls ; and by the mouth of other 
maids than the Jewish captive, if they are as brave and 
dutiful to God as she, the simple word may be uttered 
that heals them. 

It is time to advance to a later stage of the Christian 
woman's experience. If her moral power is so decisive 



THE CHRISTIAN WOMAN. 



171 



at the time when life has devolved upon her the fewest 
responsibilities, and neither age nor station has vested in 
her any adventitious authority, that even then she stands 
in her private place either as a preacher of righteousness 
or an emissary of the Tempter, it is only more command- 
ing yet when she has taken up the complicated relations 
of marriage, and assumed the spiritual governance of that 
lesser church, that sacred seminary, — the family. At 
the height of her influence, both domestic and social, she 
then acts at once through the living medium of an indi- 
vidual example, and through the manifold ties of her po- 
sition, for the blessing, or the fatal misleading, of many. 
I say again, nothing but the piety of the New Testament 
can suffice for her high calling. 

The chief enemies to her Christian simplicity — and 
thus to the symmetry of her own character, as well as the 
integrity of her influence — are social ambition, an appe- 
tite for admiration, the passion for indiscriminate excite- ' 
ment, and, in other constitutions, a dull servitude to the 
routine of mechanical tasks. 

1. By social ambition, I mean the vulgar appetite for 
those external distinctions, which are even more danger- 
ous to woman than to man, because of the inherent, nat- 
ural aristocracy of her nature. A wife or mother, who 
suffers it to be her supreme exertion to rise in the public 
consideration, has already parted with that artless sincer- 
ity which is the chief grace of her womanhood. It is in- 
evitable, then, that she should be always bringing the 
niost tender sanctities of life into market, — reducing the 
charm of honest courtesy into a financial convenience, 
and making a brokerage of hospitalities. Mechanics and 
merchants, whom thrift would have elevated into legiti- 
mate prosperity at last, are led into ruinous extravagance 



172 



THE CHRISTIAN WOMAN. 



by this poor slavery to names, appearances, and outsides. 
Not culture, nor the real mental nor moral advantage of 
better associates, not solid gain of mind or heart, but a 
nominal superiority, pride of place, successful competition 
with neighbors, — these are the rank shoots of social am- 
bition. Growing refinements and elegances are honors, 
so far as they are modest badges of growing diligence. 
Any other "getting up in the world" is not getting 
nearer to heaven. Low tricks and transparent artifices 
are Ambition's awkward tools. Falsehood is too often 
its ally ; and a spirit alien from that of the Gospel is its 
instigation. 

2. Appetite for admiration. Could some searching 
census register the number of those who are kept aloof 
from the love of God by this foolish vanity alone, should 
we dare to look into the swelling catalogue ? Could 
some magic reflection be added to mirrors, so that, while 
they show back the adjustment of garments, they should 
also reveal the emptiness of the soul, what dismal disclos- 
ures would startle the sleeping conscience ! How slow 
pride is to learn that every accumulation of useless finery 
upon the person bears an exact proportion to the poverty 
of character beneath it! When the true Christian stand- 
ard of dress and furnishing shall be confessed, these 
wasteful outlays on gaudy colors and superfluous orna- 
ments will be blushed for as indecencies. God in his 
justice cannot be satisfied while the grand charities and 
philanthropies of his kingdom languish, and the treas- 
uries of ostentation are so full. Honesty stands aghast, 
economy is laughed to scorn, Christian humility is in- 
sulted, the Gospel is denied, by dresses that almost every 
Christian assembly tolerates. The reformation of these 
abuses belongs peculiarly to woman, "whose adorning, 



THE CHRISTIAN WOMAN. 



173 



let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, 
and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel ; but 
let it be the hidden nature of the heart, in that which is 
not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet 
spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. For 
after this manner, in the old time, the holy women, who 
trusted in God, adorned themselves." 

3. Passion for indiscriminate excitement. What hold 
has religion taken of that mind which never rests in its 
insatiable craving for some public spectacle, — is never 
satisfied except when it is preparing for some scene of 
social display, or exulting over its conquests? What 
place in that distracted and disordered heart for Religion 
to breathe the first whisper of her tranquil benediction ? 
what place for the patient exercises of self-examination, 
for communion with God, for the prayer that asks " the 
calm retreat, the silent shade " ? There is no noble type 
of womanhood that does not wear serenity upon its fore- 
head. 

4. On the other hand, in constitutions of an opposite 
inclination, female life is apt to degenerate, if not inspired 
by religion, into a tame routine of narrow domestic cares, 
dwarfing the spirit to its own contracted limitations. The 
very nature of woman requires animation for its health. 
Religion, with its infinite mysteries, its deep and stirring 
experience, its boundless duties, offers that needed stim- 
ulus, — offers it to the obscurest and the lowliest. At 
her call, the whole army of martyrs, and the glorious com- 
pany of Apostles, pass by. The veil is lifted from Judaea, 
peopled with miracles. The Prophets repeat for her their 
majestic visions, and David chants to her his undying 
songs. Heaven opens the leaves of its shining portals, 
the angels are singing over Bethlehem, the Magi kneel 

15* 



174 



THE CHRISTIAN WOMAN. 



with Mary, and our Lord is seen blessing the women that 
hide their eyes at Calvary. These are the scenes, and 
these the voices, that animate the Christian woman's 
meditation ; and, when she passes from them into the 
gayeties of the world, it is like coming down from the 
high mountains of transfiguration, and from among the 
lamps of heaven, into the lurid glare of some playhouse 
pit. Imaginative, dreaming, musing, mystical woman! 
Christianity, after all, is thy most satisfying friend. 

The Christian wife and mother is a Christian in the 
spirit by which she orders her household and nurtures her 
offspring. Too many mothers make their first request 
for their sons that of the mother of Zebedee's children, — 
that they may sit on thrones of wealth and power. 
What wonder if those sons are worldlings, are hypocrites, 
are criminals ? Too many train up their daughters with 
no loftier aim than to be beautiful brides, or the centres of 
meretricious observation at summer watering-places, or 
to value a husband by his income, or not to be over-nice 
in their judgment of men, because they are not expected 
to be virtuous like women. Infamous effrontery towards 
God ! And thus are reared, generation by generation, 
those successive ranks of artificial and perverted things 
called " women of the world," — women that might 
figure without disgrace at the court of a profligate Louis 
or a shameless Charles, where disgrace is annihilated by 
making corruption the fashion ; women that are fit for 
no other career than in the unprincipled saloons of the 
Paris of the last century ; women who have passed that 
pagan sentiment into a Christian adoption, that " mothers *<- 
are sad w T hen daughters are born." 

Not such — O very far from such as she ! — is the 
mother that has sat, with the sisters of Bethany, at the 



THE CHRISTIAN WOMAN. 



175 



feet of Jesus ; that has entered into devout communion 
with the Redeemer in his Church ; that has made her 
quiet dwelling fragrant with the odors of the prayers of 
saints. She stands in her household, the priestess of an 
immortal faith, the reconciler of human love with the 
divine ; she moves among sons and daughters, folding 
the hands of infancy in prayer, joining the hands of all in 
fellowship, opening them in charity, and pointing with 
her own to heaven. 

" She can so impress 
With quietness and beauty, and so feed 
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, 
Eash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, 
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 
The dreary intercourse of daily life, 
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb 
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold 
Is full of blessings/' 

And thus I have come, finally, to what may be briefly 
established, — that Christianity exhibits no more perfect 
achievement than in the completed character of a spirit- 
ual womanhood ; for, passing on one stage later yet, we 
find the united result of a life's discipline and a heavenly 
faith in the Christian woman's old age. Providence has 
not withheld that confirmation of the power and beauty 
of religion from our eyes. We feel new confidence in 
truth, new love for goodness, new zeal for duty, new 
trust in God, new gratitude to Christ, when we look on 
her ripened holiness ; and, as her strength faints before 
the power of decay, behold the crown of immortality 
descending almost visibly upon her head ! The recollec- 
tion of her former activities blends with the hallowed 
hope of her renewed energies in the immaterial body, 
with which she shall be clothed upon from heaven. The 



176 



THE CHRISTIAN WOMAN. 



thanksgivings of the poor that she has blessed, the tears 
of orphans that she has led, the tributes of the sick that 
she has visited, the perfume of the charities she has scat- 
tered, throng up to make the fading light of her evening 
tranquil. She is a mother to her children after they 
cease to be children ; she is a matron in the Church, be- 
cause the Church has been strengthened by her blameless 
walk. Every good cause of humanity is encouraged by 
her prayers, sent up from a shaded chamber, because 
those prayers have had no contradiction in her deeds. 
The heart of her husband trusts in her. Her children 
rise up every morning to call her blessed. In her tongue 
is the law of kindness. Strength and honor are her 
clothing. Like the holy women of old time, her orna- 
ment is a meek and quiet spirit. And she shall rejoice 
with what exceeding joy, when heart and tongue fail, 
at the right hand of God ! 

I cannot so well finish this account of a Christian 
woman as by repeating the following touching, simple, 
sorrowful memorial of his wife, written by one of the 
statesmen of England — Sir James Mackintosh — in a 
private letter to a friend. " She was a woman," he 
writes, " who, by the tender management of my weak- 
nesses, gradually corrected the most pernicious of them. 
She became prudent from affection ; and, though of the 
most generous nature, she was taught frugality and 
economy by her love for me. During the most critical 
period of my life, she preserved order in my affairs, from 
the care of which she relieved me. She gently reclaimed 
me from dissipation, she propped my weak and irresolute 
nature, she urged my indolence to all the exertions that 
have been useful or creditable to me, and she was per- 
petually at hand to admonish my heedlessness and im- 



THE CHRISTIAN WOMAN. 



177 



providence. To her I owe whatever I am, — to her 
whatever I shall be. In her solicitude for my interest, 
she never for a moment forgot my character. Her feel- 
ings were warm and impetuous ; but she was placable, 
tender, and constant. Such was she whom I have lost ; 
and I have lost her when a knowledge of her worth had 
refined my youthful love into friendship, before age had 
deprived it of much of its original ardor. I seek relief, 
and I find it, in the consolatory opinion, that a benevo- 
lent Wisdom inflicts the chastisement, as well as bestows 
the enjoyment, of human life ; that superintending Good- 
ness will one day enliven the darkness which surrounds 
our, nature and hangs over our prospects ; that this 
dreary and wretched life is not the whole of man ; that 
a being capable of such proficiency in science and virtue 
is not like the beasts that perish ; that there is a dwell- 
ing-place prepared for the spirits of the just ; that the 
ways of God will yet be vindicated to man." 



SERMON XIII. 



THE LAW OF THE HOUSE. 

THUS SAITH THE LORD, SET THINE HOUSE IN ORDER | FOR THOU 
SHALT DIE, AND NOT LIVE. — Isa. XXXviii. 1. 

As Religion asks only the simplest array of circum- 
stance to demonstrate her sublimest principles ; only 
the little sphere of an obscure fortune to round out all 
her majestic orbit of duty ; only the common people as 
spectators, to unroll the splendid constellation of her 
promises ; and only the humblest foothold in the heart, to 
bear all that heart's affections with her into the highest 
heaven, — so she requires only the plainest language to 
declare her most searching doctrines. 

The ordinary meaning of the word Economy^ which 
makes it apply to mere prudence in pecuniary expendi- 
ture, or a judicious handling of the financial resources of 
living, is only the secondary, not the original, import of 
the term, as appears by a reference to its Greek deriva- 
tion. Restore its primary signification, and it instantly 
stretches out to embrace far more than worldly thrift, 
more than honesty, more than philosophy. It gathers 
up and condenses the whole religious obligation and 
responsibility of one great department of our life. We 
may preach the whole Gospel of Christ, to the household, 



THE LAW OF THE HOUSE. 



179 



through the suggestions of that simple word 'Economy, 
For it signifies, literally, the Law of the House ; the 
ordering of man's whole domestic existence ; the inau- 
guration of the Divine Will over his dwelling. To the 
soul surrounded by its natural, human relationships, the 
command out of the mouth of God is, " Set thy house 
in order " : obey this spiritual economy. 

The subject I set before you is The Law of the House. 
And the discourse will proceed through these three posi- 
tions: — 1. That the house is a divine institution; 2. That 
every family has its law of family life, — its ruling prin- 
ciple or passion ; 3. That only one law, and that promul- 
gated in Christ, can comprehend, meet, and satisfy the 
household, in a spiritual economy. 

Out of the Romish Church, which claims special rev- 
elations of divine authority for every ordinance it en- 
joins, we have scarcely any terms to define exactly what 
an ordinance is. The Protestant identifies a religious 
ordinance by finding, upon its origin, its preservation, 
and its uses in the world, wonderful marks of a heavenly 
design. 

I. Judged by these rules, the Family is an ordinance 
of God. It draws its credentials from the parental ap- 
pointment in Eden. Its solemn ceremony of installa- 
tion was the crowning act of creation. No other institu- 
tion, whether surviving now or perished in the past, can 
show such an antiquity. The records of it are the first 
syllables of written history, and the faintest stammerings 
of tradition. It runs up, beyond Assyrian or Chaldean 
empires, and the founding of Palmyra, to the tents on 
the plains of Shinar. The first breathing of its spirit 
was the simplicity of patriarchs. It began while the 
earliest beams of the world's twilight were shooting up 



180 



THE LAW OF THE HOUSE. 



into a sky whose stars no tongue had yet called by their 
names, — over an unpeopled world. Was not its origin, 
then, divine ? 

And is not the preservation of the family as clearly 
stamped with God's purpose as its origin ? How mar- 
vellously that institution of the House survives revolu- 
tions ! How tenaciously, everywhere, it clings in the 
web of human events ! How obstinately, under all 
conditions, it justifies its right to be ! You might as 
soon find by chemical analysis, and pluck out with your 
finger, the living principle of a growing cedar, as eradi- 
cate from society the indestructible tendency it has to 
throw itself out into families. Subdue that tendency in 
one place, and it will break out in another. An empire 
may rot, a nation may be wasted, a city may be sacked ; 
but, as if some immortal element quickened it, this hal- 
lowed institution of the household lives on ; refuses to 
be destroyed. Surely there have been changes enough 
on this convulsed, decaying, and ensanguined earth, to 
shake out of its place any form of life God does not 
mean shall stand. But the house is just as sure, after 
a Macedonian or a Mexican dynasty has fallen, as before. 
That little charmed circle of parents and children stands 
against all the destructions of time, more secure than 
any army clad in steel. You may scatter mankind like 
the Hebrew tribes ; but straightway they will group 
themselves, and be found in families. You may bury 
Nineveh, or strangle Herculaneum, or starve Babylon, 
or burn Warsaw ; but the family you cannot dispossess, 
nor batter down, nor drown with water, nor burn with 
fire. The advancing growths of civilization only vary 
its form ; they do not affect its substance. The tents of 
shepherds vanish ; but more stable dwellings take their 



THE LAW OF THE HOUSE. 



181 



places. The bamboo hut of the Indian, and the Eu- 
ropean mansion, each holds its family. Agricultural 
communities build their separate houses of wood, and 
commercial in blocks of wood or stone, but not disper- 
sion nor agglomeration can blur over the lines that di- 
vide the invisible or spiritual house from its neighbor. 
Is not its preservation, then, divine ? 

Its uses, — with equal distinctness, with what bright 
tokens, with what emphatic demonstrations, do they 
speak of the home as God's appointment ! "Where 
lie the clearest proofs of a heavenly watchfulness over 
our heads, if not in the shelters where we lay those heads 
at night ? Consider what securities home affections bind 
about tempted virtue ; how the man of business carries 
a zone of moral purity woven about him by the caresses 
of children, from his house to the market-place ; how the 
false or fraudulent purpose, half conceived in the count- 
ing-room, is rebuked and put to shame by the inno- 
cence that gazes into his eyes and clings about his neck 
when he goes home and shuts the door on the world at 
night. Consider what a hinderance household love inter- 
poses, to stay the straying feet of dissipation ; what a 
triple shield it holds up against the sins of prodigality, 
indulgence, or dishonor! Consider that, with most of 
us, whatever impulses of generosity visit the soul, what- 
ever prayers we breathe, whatever holy vows of religious 
consecration we pledge, whatever aspiring resolves we 
form, are apt to spring up within the sacred enclosures 
of the house ! Consider how the mere memory of that 
spot, with all its precious endearments, goes forth with 
the traveller, sails with the sailor, keeps vigils over the 
exposed heart among the perils of the foreign city, 
sweetens the feverish dreams and softens the pain of the 

1G 



182 



THE LAW OP THE HOUSE. 



sufferer in the sickly climate, and, by calling his love 
homeward, calls his faith to Heaven ! Consider that the 
discipline of disease, the purification of bereavement, the 
tears of mourners, are all elements in the sanctity of 
home ; that closets of devotion are parts of the architec- 
ture of the house ; that Bibles are opened on its tables ; 
that the eyes of new-born children open, and their first 
breaths are drawn, in its chambers ; and that the dead 
body is borne out of its doors ; — how fast do the gather- 
ing proofs accumulate, that the human dwelling is a 
sanctuary of the Most High ! 

Whoever builds its walls, God hallows them for his 
temple. That outward house is but the visible pattern 
of the interior edifice ; and of that spiritual structure 
God has laid the foundation, and sprung the arches, and 
commanded the economy. The family is surely his 
ordinance. 

Who doubts it ? Do you doubt it, because the daily 
on-going of domestic life is so often commonplace, so 
often vulgar, so often selfish, and tedious, and ill-tem- 
pered, and vicious ? or because some disgusting disclos- 
ure of conjugal faithlessness, shamelessly reported abroad 
from the proper privacy of courts of justice, sickens all 
honest sensibilities, and makes us half ashamed that we 
are men and women ourselves ? 

I reply, that, in the analogies of its constitution, we 
may regard every family as only a smaller common- 
wealth, or a more complicated individual, or an undisci- 
plined church. God has ordained it, as he has ordained 
the state, the individual, and the Church. But he has 
not, in one case more than in the others, fixed, by abso- 
lute or arbitrary rule, the form that the institution shall 
put on. He leaves the body, into which the life shall be 



THE LAW OF THE HOUSE. 



183 



developed, to be shaped by the shifting conditions of 
time, circumstance, culture, temperament. Just as the 
empire at Rome, the oligarchy at Athens, the chieftain- 
ship of the Cherokees, and the republic of the United 
States, are all alike divine powers in the world, — not 
because they are empire and oligarchy, despotism or de- 
mocracy, but simply because they are all government, 
that is, organized order, for each given people, - — so the 
family may be a very different institution, in kind, in 
Siam, in Turkey, or in New England ; but in each coun- 
try it is an institution, and God recognizes it as sacred. 
It is the best representative of the idea of family to be 
had of that nation in that age. It is suffered to stand, 
not as the best abstract or absolute form of family, but 
because there is now none better. The prime intention 
of it is only very imperfectly embodied in the histori- 
cal fact ; the particular example, savage or Turkish or 
English, may be a poor expression of the original and 
universal idea of family, as it lay in the Creative Mind. 
Still, man must accept it into his respect, as God accepts 
it into his providential method, not for what it lacks, but 
for what it contains ; not because it is everything it might 
be, but in spite of what it is not. If the Almighty Jus- 
tice could take into the system by which he works out 
the destinies of the race, such corrupt societies as Corinth 
and Carthage, such tyrants as Caesar Borgia and Herod, 
such princes as Louis XIV. and Henry VIII., man is 
bound by every moral law to reverence this appointment 
of the household for the germ of truth it holds in its bo- 
som, — though in any given case it should be outwardly 
as unsound as the shell that falls off from the springing 
corn. 

Do you ask why, then, if God meant the family to be 



184 



THE LAW OF THE HOUSE. 



regarded as a sacred institution, he has not kept it sacred 
from degradation and abuse, I refer you to the simple 
fact, — obvious certainly if not intelligible to us, — that 
he has admitted into the problem of all our life another 
element besides his own almightiness, namely, man's 
free will; that is, allowing a certain amount of interference 
from human perversity, short-sightedness, and depravity. 
And these disturbing influences have thrust themselves 
in to mar the beauty and debase the virtue of the house, 
as they have to pollute every region, business, and fac- 
ulty. " The trail of the serpent is over them all." We 
might as well ask why the sacred trust of government has 
been suffered to fall into bloody and rapacious hands, — 
why the Church has sometimes reeked with corruption, 
and its sacraments have been dispensed by perjury, blas- 
phemy, and sensuality, — as hesitate to hold the family 
an ordinance of God, because all the heavenly graces are 
not grouped together to adorn every dwelling. Heaven's 
benignant design has suffered postponement from our 
choosing evil over good ; and certainly we who have in- 
troduced the mischiefs of disorder should not be forward 
to censure what our own folly has spoiled. 

So much for the first point, — that the house is a divine 
appointment. And the rule of practice drawn thus far is, 
that the more we reverence it for that divine ordaining, 
the more we shall see God in its daily aspect, and strive 
to set it into his order. 

II. My next position is that every family has its law 
of family life, — its ruling principle or passion. Its in- 
dividual members may differ very widely from each other 
in disposition or character. The same house may hold a 
quick-tempered brother and an even-tempered sister ; a 
thoughtful husband and a worldly wife ; a conscientious 



v 



THE LAW OF THE HOUSE. 185 

parent and a headstrong child ; yet you will discover 
running through them all a certain family character, a 
spirit of the house, pervading all and modifying each. 
Just as a general physical resemblance, mixed up with 
many diversities of feature and manner, marks them as 
of one blood, so a uniform tone of the dwelling pierces 
through all that is peculiar to the person. This charac- 
teristic something, giving moral complexion to the whole, 
we may call the Law of the House. It is made up of the 
moral convictions, purposes of life, habits of domestic in- 
tercourse, and degrees of culture, common to all. The 
law of a feudal castle was stately supremacy ; of a Puri- 
tan's dwelling, devout decorum ; of a modern Jew's, ava- 
rice ; of a South-Sea-Islander's, indolent luxury ; of an 
Algerine's, plunder ; of a frontier huntsman's, hardy ad- 
venture. So within our own social system : the law of 
one house is personal display ; of another, money ; of 
another, animal comfort ; of another, social ambition ; 
of another, unceasing mutual irritation, where each man 
is an overreaching Esau; of another, petty anxieties, 
where every woman is a troubled Martha ; of another, 
intellectual improvement ; of another, affectionate atten- 
tions ; of another still, religious duty. And there are some 
families — Heaven forbear with them ! — in which the 
only law of the house seems to be that the lodgers there 
shall be in it as little as possible ; the problem of every 
morning being where to spend the evening, — the dread- 
ed curse being the necessity of spending it at home, and 
home itself sunk into a compound contrivance of dormi- 
tory and eating-room. If each one finds it difficult to 
understand its own ruling trait, it will easily be satisfied 
of the quality of its neighbors. And it is among the 
habits of our familiar conversation to specify certain 
16 * 



186 



THE LAW OF THE HOUSE. 



moral attributes as pertaining to certain families, speak- 
ing of them collectively. 

Observe, too, that this general spirit of the household 
life is really a more powerful element in it than any spe- 
cial plan or work. Being permanent, it gives a right or 
wrong character to that multitude of little actions which 
hardly have much moral significance of their own, and 
it makes every deed we do more virtuous, or more sinful, 
by putting into it so much of a good spirit or a bad. 
This supreme Law of the House bears the same relation 
to ordinary domestic transactions that political science 
recognizes between what Lord Bacon called the law of 
laws, that is, the universal principles by which all gov- 
ernments, however framed, should act for the benefit of 
the people, and those laws pertaining to a particular 
state, discriminating as to its several departments, regu- 
lating judicial, legislative, and executive functions. It 
will predominate, in the long run, over all occasional im- 
pulses, all the affairs of the day. It is the great control- 
ling influence, determining the spiritual standing of the 
family. It is the law of the family life. 

Observe, also, that no inmate of your house is too in- 
experienced to have this influence stealing in upon him, 
moulding his future manhood. The law of the house 
works itself into the circulations and fibres of every grow- 
ing branch. The youngest child in the circle is watching 
your face, committing your tones and motions to mem- 
ory, taking your most unconscious language for a lesson, 
and laying up the careless revelations of your frivolity or 
your piety for future imitation. If he sees that all your 
familiar arrangements are made to redound to your self- 
ish enjoyment, at the cost of others' W3lfare, why should 
he not turn out a self-seeker, — disagreeable and wretch- 



THE LAW OF THE HOUSE. 



187 



ed ? If he sees that you make worship and conscience 
subordinate to a bargain, or a pleasure-party, what is to 
hinder him from growing up into a dishonest speculator 
or a dissolute prodigal ? If, on the other hand, he be- 
holds in your daily example some noble evidence of a 
devotion to God, and fidelity to right, which shape all 
your transactions into an offering of religion, then, unless 
some very cruel seduction besets him from abroad, he is 
a candidate for a Christian maturity. 

This, then, is the second point established, — that there 
is always a spirit of the house, or law of the family, of 
one kind or another, blessing or cursing, — forming char- 
acter, day by day, for salvation or perdition. The prac- 
tical reflection is, what tremendous consequences to every 
soul hang on the decision, whether this law is a ruling 
passion or a ruling principle. 

III. But another truth is to come, — a truth to which 
these preceding ones are but preparatory steps. There 
is only one law, after all, which can meet, satisfy, and 
redeem a family of God's children. Without this, what- 
ever desire or purpose takes ascendency, there is no dura- 
ble order, there is no established peace, there is no spir- 
itual fellowship. I wish to deny no facts, even though, 
by being misplaced or exaggerated, they may mislead 
and betray. Admit all that the utmost sophistry, plead- 
ing the cause of flesh and the Devil, can pretend. 
Wealth will do something for you; a library will do 
something ; increasing profits in merchandise, increasing 
dividends on stocks, a salary that more than covers 
your expenditure, — verily they that seek these as the 
supreme good have their reward ! Does it satisfy, then, 
the hunger of an aspiring soul ? Does it meet the crav- 
ing of your soberest, which are your truest, hours ? Does 



188 



THE LAW OF THE HOUSE. 



it even realize that dim and vague ideal with which you 
started on your course ? Unless you let the friendly au- 
thority of the Son of God, who knew all that is in the 
heart and died to save it from sorrow, answer for you, 
you must answer for yourself by the fearful process of 
trying the experiment. Try it ; and if you do not die 
before it is done, you will infallibly admit at last, with a 
satiated heart and a broken spirit, what you refuse to be- 
lieve at a Saviour's invitation ! 

You have seen manhood and womanhood begin their 
household life, with no deeper purpose than the acciden- 
tal pleasure of the day ; no preparation of faith for any 
other than times of prosperity or health ; no consecration 
to the God of death and life, of sick-chambers, of the 
dull waste of hope, and disappointed fortunes, and part- 
ing clasps of the hand at death-beds. But neither I, nor 
you, nor any human witness, ever saw that a life so be- 
gun, and lived through on that low level, was felt to an- 
swer the high ends for which life was given. There was 
a certain fading away, year by year, of the meaning that 
was hid in honest vows ; a tragic dying out of all lumi- 
nous and satisfying thoughts. There will be some low 
under-note of warning in all endearments and all glad- 
ness ; some hollow sound in mirth ; some sudden droop- 
ing of spirits at the end of the feast ; some dimness on 
the fine gold, — wages that enterprise has earned, or 
prizes that bold ventures have drawn. There will be a 
dreary look sometimes on the costly furnishings. Curi- 
osities of art and ingenuity will mock the empty spirit. 
A father's praise will not be a father's blessing ; a moth- 
er's glance of pride will not be a mother's holy prayer ; 
the brother's departure to other lands will leave no con- 
soling presence of faith to commend him to the God of 



THE LAW OF THE HOUSE. 189 

oceans and of storms ; the innocence of the sister will be 
the charm of earth rather than the benediction of Heaven ; 
and the child's promise, a foreshadowing of honors here, 
instead of immortality hereafter. Even the sanguine 
affection that gives the marriage-pledge cannot keep its 
beauty, its purity, or its power, unless prayers to Heaven 
relight its decaying flame. The faith of heart in heart 
will fail, at last, without faith in God. Except you " set 
your house in order " by the religion of Christ, you throw 
it open to an inevitable anarchy of passions. 

" Set thine house in order," by the faith of the Re- 
deemer who died for thee, by the holy vigilance of a 
prayerful mind, by enthroning over your every action 
reverence for Almighty God. Nothing else will bring 
that order in. However the outward economy may 
nourish, the omnipotence of Heaven is pledged, that in 
the spiritual house no order can be, but discord rather, 
and confusion, and every evil thing, save by faith. 

Set thy house in order by a religious faith. Parents, 
without Christian hearts, not tasting, nor even praying 
to taste, regeneration for themselves, offer substitutes. 
There can be no substitute. It is not in the power of 
irreligious ingenuity to devise one. It is not in the jus- 
tice or the mercy of God to accept one. Some parents 
you have known, and some such there are, possibly, 
amongst you, who seem to have strangely imagined they 
can live out the remainder of ungodly lives with impu- 
nity, if they will atone for their own worldliness by 
affording their children a good moral education. " Our 
sons and daughters," they say, " shall learn prayer and 
holiness ; have us excused." God has no relief for thee, 
under that profane inconsistency. He calls thee, evasive 
father or timid mother, thee alone, and by thyself, thou 



190 



THE LAW OF THE HOUSE. 



wicked and slothful servant, to give thy own soul to 
him. Set thy house in order ; and that the order may 
come, establish that spiritual economy, where religion is 
law, first in thy own penitent soul. Order shall not be, 
except it is Heaven's order ; and of that, self-renunciation 
is the foremost condition. Sunday-schools to lead thy 
little ones to Heaven ! evening-hymns listened to heart- 
lessly by their pillows! an occasional sigh, of mock hu- 
mility, that they may come out well at last ! these are 
not the gates of safety on which you are to depend. 
Come out well at last ? What right have you to hope 
they shall ever come out into paths of righteousness, 
where they shall never see your own feet leading the 
way ? 

Set thy house in this order of devotion. It may cost 
sacrifice and struggle ; it must cost repentance, humilia- 
tion, breaking up of vicious alliances, abandonment of 
unrighteous gains ; it may cost you the " dread laugh of 
the world " to bend your knees to your Maker. Does 
the Eternal Voice say any the less solemnly, " Set thy 
house in order " ? Are there exceptions for your indif- 
ference ? Are the mandates of eternity to be suspended, 
are the twelve legions of angels to be perplexed with 
wonder, are the instant counsels of the God of heaven 
to be adjourned, for your unyielding pride ? Mock not 
thyself, nor thy Maker, with the decencies of refinement, 
purchased into thy house with money, with all the ac- 
complishments of many languages and sciences, with 
elegances of hospitality, and dignity of breeding, and 
even the correctness of an external prudence hallowed 
by no trust in the Christ of Calvary, — by crowding 
these things — O mournful, desperate attempt ! — into 
the empty throne where the love of God alone in Christ 
Jesus should be ! 



THE LAW OF THE HOUSE. 



191 



Set thy house in the spiritual order. Hang its walls 
with nobler pictures than art ever brought to adorn Vat- 
ican or Escurial, — with the living beauty of holy deeds. 
Arrange in its spiritual economy, each in its own ap- 
pointed place, charities that shall make its air genial, 
solid virtues of integrity and faith to be its foundation- 
stones, graces of forbearance and meekness and gentle- 
ness to embellish it, hopes of immortality to light it, and 
peace which comes of trust to fill it with fragrant incense. 
As there never yet was order without law, nor law with- 
out authority, nor authority without a supreme or ruling 
head, — ■ so in the household, as in the soul's single life, 
there can be no setting in order, unless Christ's cross is 
lifted up in the midst of it. 

There is another clause of the text which I have not 
repeated ; and how soberly does it admonish us, that any 
other order than this I have described Providence must 
some day disturb, — breaking in upon the visible circle 
with what a desolating hand ! " Thus saith the Lord, 
Set thine house in order ; for thou shalt die, and not live." 
Order in the outward family, — in the perpetual array of 
sons and daughters, offspring and parents, — does Scrip- 
ture bid you seek for this ? Eyes blinded and burnt by 
scalding tears, for sudden and bitter bereavements, will 
weep yet again and again, as they wander over the broken 
group that gathers now at their side, searching for some 
vanished form. And the mourners are ready to cry, 
66 O tantalizing expectation, that we should ever see that 
order restored, and the beloved ranks of manly strength, 
or maidenly bloom, or childish grace, refilled ! " Pa- 
tience ; for it cannot be. But if the other order is un- 
broken, — if Faith waits in it with her heavenward look, 
and Hope with her strong anchor, and Resignation, saying, 



192 



THE LAW OF THE HOUSE. 



<£ Thy will be done," — then the vacancies of the earthly 
house shall be supplied again in the heavenly ; the de- 
parted shall come back to the places that knew them 
before, in tabernacles not made with hands ; the order of 
Christian affections here shall be a type of the perfect 
order of the new family in the skies. 

" Thou shalt die, and not live." We cannot see be- 
fore us. No hand can tear one leaf from the sealed book 
where the recording angel has written against all our 
names the day of our great change. A veil shuts close 
down before our eyes on the very spot where we stand. 
This year, or another ; yourself first, or one you love bet- 
ter than yourself ; by slow decline, or swift destruction : 
these are secrets. But there is no dimness over the com- 
mand that points us to the open way of life ; no uncer- 
tainty in the immortal promise, " Set thy house in 
order " ; and then, though " absent from the body," thou 
shalt be present with " the Father of Jesus Christ, our 
Lord, of whom the whole family, in heaven and earth, 
is named." 



SERMON XIV. 



CHILDREN, — HOW TO BE RECEIVED. 

WHOSOEVER SHALL RECEIVE THIS CHILD IN MY NAME, RECEIVETH 

me. — Luke ix. 48. 

It sometimes seems to be understood that Christ, in 
these words, means merely to commend childlike quali- 
ties, — like moral simplicity, guilelessness, trust, affec- 
tionateness. We have independent proofs enough that 
all these traits engaged Christ's personal interest, and are 
enjoined by the whole spirit of his religion on every 
disciple. Wherever the divine light really shines, these 
pure qualities will open their beauty and fragrance to the 
air, as gracefully as the first wild-flowers obey the solicit- 
ings of the sunshine in spring. Undoubtedly, as Jesus 
elsewhere says, whoever will not receive the kingdom of 
Heaven with this simple, unaffected childlikeness, this 
heart of unquestioning faith, this subordination of intel- 
lectual pride and personal ambition to spontaneous 
Christian love, cannot enter therein. 

But here the statement is different. We are told what 
it is to receive a little child. The Master instructs us 
how to greet new-born souls on their entrance into life, 
with what feelings to take them into our arms, what es- 
timate to put on their immortal capacity, and with what 

17 



194 CHILDREN, HOW TO BE RECEIVED. 



grand purpose to educate them. All this he includes in 
the precept, that we " receive them in his name." Could 
the sacred and profound and peculiar duty which Chris- 
tendom owes to its offspring be more comprehensively 
declared ? How can we be said to receive children in 
the name of Christ ? Plainly enough, it is not by lavish- 
ing upon them a sentimental admiration, or an indulgent 
fondness ; it is not by making them the materials of a 
thoughtless amusement ; it is not by rejoicing over them 
with a selfish sort of pride, as the heirs of our property 
or the upholders of our worldly reputation ; it is not by 
carelessness of their spiritual training and neglect of their 
souls. On the contrary, it is by regarding them as the 
lawful inheritors of Christ's spiritual promises, — as the 
intended members of his Church, and imitators of his life, 
and partakers of his redemption, — as the appointed sub- 
jects of baptism, of prayer, and of inward renewal, — 
as being born, each one, to yield the world a Christian 
character, and thus as being profanely and terribly 
wronged whenever an irreligious indifference cheats them 
of this immortal portion. This, Christ would teach us, 
is to receive children in his name. This is to take them 
for what they are ; solemnly to take them into our hands, 
as out of the hand of God, and while clasping them to 
our breasts with natural human love, to look reverently 
up to their higher Father, and lift consecrating petitions 
that they may be saved in the life everlasting. Do this, 
and you will have no occasion to run in search of a visi- 
ble empire, or outward honors. You may cease con- 
tending with one another, ambitious disciples, about 
high places in the government, and turn your emulation 
into a more domestic realm. Do this, parents, and the 
kingdom of Heaven will come in the natural way, 



CHILDREN, HOW TO BE RECEIVED. 195 

handed down from parent to child in the blood and all 
the hereditary influences of believing generations, spread- 
ing and gaining power with all the growth and progress 
of the race. Do this, fathers and mothers, and instead of 
prostituting your energies to base contentions after the 
prizes of fortune or reputation, you will find your dignity 
and reward in developing imperishable graces in your 
children's hearts. Instead of honoring earthly prince- 
doms, or an aristocracy of wealth, you will honor the 
Divine image in the lowliest infant. To symbolize this 
spiritual truth, the Divine Redeemer himself became a 
child ; he passed to the glory of his mediatorship and the 
right hand of the Father through the swaddling-clothes 
that all humanity must wear ; he entered into the com- 
plete experience of the race by being a babe in a cradle ; 
the sages knelt at the manger ; intellect bowed to spirit- 
uality. And now, to this day, whatever Christian par- 
ent, out of a living and supreme faith in Christ, recog- 
nizes the sanctity of a child's life, and diligently trains 
him up to be a disciple, receives that child in the name 
of Christ, and gives the surest evidence that he has re- 
ceived Christ himself. He helps to fulfil the final and 
inspiring prediction with which the prophet of the old 
dispensation ushered in and described the new, — that the 
hearts of the fathers should be turned to the children, and 
the hearts of the children to their fathers. 

Let me ask you to look at some of the popular habits 
of regarding children, — yourselves judging how prevalent 
they may be, — and contrast them with what it would be 
to receive them in the name of Christ. 

One class of parents receive the little child in the name 
of money. You may think the charge of such a revolting 
profanation a harsh one to bring against any members of 



196 CHILDREN, HOW TO BE RECEIVED. 

a respectable community. Would that all who are 
prompt to repel it in language were as scrupulous to dis- 
own it practically ! But look underneath words and the 
resentments of a false sensibility, to facts. If there are 
any among you who oftenest think of your children in 
connection with property, either through the inquiry how 
much they will cost or how much they will hereafter come 
to possess ; if there are any who make the foremost pleas- 
ure in your children to consist in arraying them in the 
costly fineries of an extravagant expenditure, pampering 
your own vanity by sending them forth to the gazers of 
the streets, decked in the badges of a weak display, using 
the poor body as a dumb frame whereon to spread forth 
your own fopperies, and initiating their waking senses 
into the accursed thirst for show that fevers all our public 
manners ; or if there are any who, by positive example or 
indirect suggestion, breed in your children the pernicious 
notion that what we live for as we grow up is to be 
richer than our neighbors, — then you do, in reality, re- 
ceive the little child in the name of money. Merchan- 
dise is made of his mind and his heart. The same effect 
is produced, in a different way, if, by a penurious temper, 
you so misproportion your outlay as to pinch the nobler 
and more generous impulses in your children, thus incul- 
cating parsimony as a lesson. I do not deny that a cer- 
tain impulsive affection may be mixed with this shame- 
ful abuse. That affection may be very strong. But the 
tender and holy love of a Christian parentage, which God 
can bless, is not there. You would deem it a horrible 
cruelty if any father were to brand with a red-hot dollar 
the forehead of his boy. But you may scorch your 
child's spirit with the mark of a more fearful and lasting 
disfigurement ; and that you do, whenever your conver- 



CHILDREN, HOW TO BE RECEIVED. 197 

sation, your passionate eagerness for gain, or your daily 
practice of estimating men and things by their money- 
value, fixes slowly but deeply in his mind the avaricious 
lust that is never satisfied with getting. He will take 
the mould of his surroundings. The style of living that 
you make his daily scenery, the tone of talk that you 
make his common atmosphere vocal with, w T ill reflect 
themselves infallibly in his future manhood. He will 
have a large soul, or a belittled one ; he will be brave and 
self-poised, or a feeble driveller ; he will be an indepen- 
dent leader of public opinion, or a miserable slave to his 
own interests ; — in a word, he will be a nobly developed 
child or a spoilt one, according as you receive him in 
the name of Christ, or in the name of money. 

Another class of parents receive the little child in the 
name of worldly success. By this estimation of child- 
hood I mean something a little less sottish than the one 
just noticed, because it admits some less gross ingredi- 
ents. To receive a child in the name of worldly success, 
is to be chiefly anxious for his social position and his 
business prospects. It is to make everything in his train- 
ing bear on his thrift in trade, or, with the daughter, on 
her marriage with a thrifty husband. It is forgotten, that, 
for every man, there is a better kind of success than suc- 
cess in his trade, — not inconsistent with that, but, on the 
contrary, helping it as righteousness always strengthens 
prosperity, — and that for every woman there is a devout 
womanhood attainable, more honorable than any wedlock. 
The mistake I speak of is not inconsistent with the ut- 
most pains to furnish children with a good secular educa- 
tion. Only every science studied must light some path 
to enterprise, and of all sciences calculation is the chief ; 
every language learned must be a stepping-stone to a 
17* 



198 CHILDREN, HOW TO BE RECEIVED. 



profitable situation ; every talent must be convertible into 
current coin ; every accomplishment must prepare the 
way to a paying office, or conciliate custom. No faculty 
like the faculty of skilful traffic or pushing for promotion. 
If we were stark materialists, — and nothing is more ex- 
actly adapted to degrade us into materialism, — this 
would be a very acceptable philosophy of life and learn- 
ing, — a life without a faith, and a learning without a 
Bible. But the moment you look down a little way into 
the unsounded and infinite mysteries of your child's im- 
mortality ; the moment you open the New Testament 
and sink back into the sober convictions which its inspired 
sentences reawaken in you ; the moment you look around 
you at the ever-burning fires of trial, like disease, or nat- 
ural calamity, or bereavement, which try every man's 
work, and see how all earthly goods turn to ashes in those 
fires ; the moment you look forward and in solemn antici- 
pation let the Divine word lead you, following your child, 
into the presence of the unchangeable realities and the 
certain judgment, — then you feel again how different a 
thing it is to receive and treat that child in the safe and 
life-giving name of Christ, from receiving and treating 
him in the name of a worldly success the most brilliant 
or most substantial. 

Another class still, not unrepresented among us, receive 
the child in the name of selfish joy. In infancy, the ra- 
diant little creature is the graceful toy of idle hours. 
Later, he is the precious minister to a proud compla- 
cency, — the necessary image, and probably the central 
image, to fill out the circle of personal comfort and de- 
light. The father comes home from the engrossments of 
business, he takes out his neck a moment from the yoke 
of traffic, and his children are the welcome instruments 



CHILDREN, HOW TO BE RECEIVED. 199 

of his recreation. The mother watches her darling boy, 
or girl, with a vigilance that never flags nor cools. But 
there is such a thing as maternal vigilance prompted by 
mere human fondness, or the passion for the dear one's 
presence, — all holiness crushed out of it, because it is 
without God. You know what the grave does with that. 
And there is the vigilance of a Christian mother's love, 
more faithful unspeakably, and over that you know that 
death and the whole army of diseases have no power. 

I know of hardly any gloomier sight in the world than 
one of these homes ruled by this world's temper, where 
this unsanctified pride in children's beauty or attainments, 
however strong or kind, is nothing under the sun but an 
extension of poor self-love, — the celestial quality, the 
divine element, of parental affection, perished from it; 
homes where the spiritual law and life in Christ find no 
grateful recognition, exercise no binding control ; homes 
where everything else is done for children except that one 
thing without which all else is worthless, receiving them 
in the name of Christ ; where parents gaze into the child's 
face only to see a reflection of their own personal satis- 
faction, and cling to the frail body all the more tena- 
ciously and desperately because there is no tranquil look- 
ing forward beyond the bodily separation. Again and 
again I have involuntarily shuddered at one of these 
melancholy spectacles, — all the happiness so superficial, 
so fragile, so sure to be rent to pieces presently and scat- 
tered on the winds. I have seen the sad instinctive terror 
with which the thought, or the uttered hint, that the child 
might some time die, was stifled. I have seen the dread- 
ful struggle of unbelieving love, to put aside and cover 
up the irresistible decrees of God. A pure and lovely 
child in such a house, in the arms of such a father, ought 



200 



CHILDREN, — HOW TO BE RECEIVED. 



to be painted like a spotless angel held in the grasp of 
some cool, calculating, faithless demon of the pit. O 
was there no better, no more spiritual, no more Christian 
welcome, for that stainless heart on God's earth than 
this ? Love is there, if so bad a counterfeit of God's 
best gift deserves the name ; but think of the anguish 
that waits inevitably on unbelieving affections. The hour 
comes. If the dark distress of moral ruin, a wrecked 
conscience, does not come, that other event comes that 
is inexorable. No selfishness is hard enough, or firm or 
close enough, to ward off disorders or baffle Providence. 
And when it comes, God spare the anguish of the par- 
ent that is bereaved without Christ, and so sorrows with- 
out hope ! To those that have never tasted the experi- 
ence, these words may sound unreal ; but all of you 
who have looked on your dead child's face, know that 
in that hour there are but three realities in the universe : 
one of these is sorrow, — and it is sorrow, utter and hope- 
less to all them that do not feel the other two, — God, and 
the eternal life brought to light in Jesus Christ our Lord. 

There is another class of parents yet, — beside those 
that receive the child in the name of Christ, — and it is 
made up of those that receive him in the name of a blind 
fatality. That is to say, they have a general and honest 
enough wish that their children might be found on the 
side of goodness ; but they fail to see that the work of 
putting them there is a business of their own. They 
have not given up the hope that their offspring may turn 
out well; but they leave the sacred, slow, responsible 
toil of making it turn out so untouched. They answer 
to your surprise with some vicious maxim about all 
children being obliged to go through a period of insub- 
ordination, and knowing the world, — which commonly 



CHILDREN, HOW TO BE RECEIVED. 



201 



means knowing everything that is worst in the world. 
They trust to accident. They hand over their own 
children's immortal purity and welfare, like pagans, to 
luck. At this terrible life-and-death encounter between 
a young soul and perdition, they, the parents, are only 
to look on ! At that mortal struggle they are idle spec- 
tators ! Everything else they have done, or are willing 
to do, for their child, everything save taking up, with ear 
nest and ardent purpose, his spiritual nurture and his 
Christian salvation. The utmost they can give be- 
sides clothes, board, spending-money, and schooling, is 
an occasional moral reflection, or an introduction to the 
minister, or a few months of irregular attendance at 
Sunday-school, and possibly the birthday present of a 
Bible with a clasp, which no example of their own en- 
courages him to open. Systematic, patient, persisting, 
entreating, prayerful nurture of the undying spirit,— 
there is none. Yet is there one of you all that can 
deny that this training of the soul is infinitely the most 
weighty and solemn of all duties to the child ? Why 
do you not receive him, then, in the name of Christ ? 

But, praise Heaven ! there is another class ; and there 
is no cause, in nature or reason, but only in our dull and 
sluggish hearts, why it should not come to include all 
the others. The Master has shown us a more excellent 
way. That other name, the only one under heaven 
whereby we can be saved, is given us. Bring the chil- 
dren, says the Saviour, unto me. He that receiveth 
them in my name, receiveth me. What, then, is includ- 
ed in that Christian treatment of the young, as before 
God and his Church ? 

First, that, having yourselves been joined to Christ 
by repentance and faith, you hold and treat them as the 



202 CHILDREN, HOW TO BE RECEIVED. 

rightful heirs of a spiritual life in yourselves. You have 
more to transmit to them than your constitutional tem- 
perament, your property, and your name. When God 
permitted you to be parents of living children, he bound 
you, by a law that admits no escape, to breathe into 
them a higher life than that of the body or the mind, 
even that spiritual life whereof all make themselves par- 
takers who heartily believe in the Son of God. And 
this goes out of you by other means than formal speech. 
Let it be in you, and it must emanate, by unconscious 
waves of influence, from look and voice and attitude, and 
all the countless and nameless tokens of parental faith. 
What ordained preacher has the power of a Christian 
mother ? I have been told, that, in the wonderful and 
gracious experiments made in our times for kindling up 
a little light even in the darkness of idiocy, the first ray 
of intelligence that is observed to gleam across the im- 
becile's vacant face, and the first pulse of feeling strong 
enough to overmaster furious passions and arrest the 
wandering eyes, are commonly observed to appear when 
some gentle touch or tone of womanly kindness rekin- 
dles in the heart the flickering and faint impressions of 
a mother's tenderness. Could any proof more striking 
show us what lips, what countenance, whose plead- 
ings and intercessions, ought first to dedicate the child 
to holiness and the Holy One ? Even the old Romans, 
in their heathenism, had a touching superstition of holding 
the face of the new-born infant upward to the heavens, 
— signifying, by thus presenting its forehead to the stars, 
that it was to look above the world into celestial glories. 
The goddess that was supposed to preside over this as- 
piring ceremony was named from the word " levare" 
which means "to raise aloft." It was a superstition then. 



CHILDREN, HOW TO BE RECEIVED. 203 

Christianity dispels the fable and the doubt, and gives 
us the clear realization of that dim, pagan yearning, in a 
Christian baptism and training. What shall be said of 
those nominally Christian parents who do not discover 
even the heathen's sensibility, — and, with all the blessed 
ordinances of the Son of Mary in their sight, content 
with low and earthly satisfactions, refuse to their chil- 
dren even the Church's benediction ? 

Again, the spiritual obligation involved in receiving a 
child in the name of Christ requires that you esteem him, 
even in his childhood, as a sharer with yourself in a Di- 
vine covenant. He is to be sheltered under that sacred 
promise, reaching down from Abraham through all dis- 
pensations, by which the Heavenly Father admits the off- 
spring of all believing and faithful disciples to the same 
secret privileges with their parents, — provided only they 
will consent. This makes the title to Christian citizen- 
ship hereditary. It rests with the voluntary consent of 
the child, when he is free to choose or to reject, to ratify 
and confirm the baptismal pledge which the parents made 
in his behalf; above all, it rests with the parent to follow 
up the sprinkling of water with daily and devout instruc- 
tion in divine knowledge, — Hne upon line, precept upon 
precept. These things being insured, God is not forget- 
ful of his promise, nor will he leave faithful servants to 
strive alone; Keep that promise ever before your bap- 
tized child's eyes. There will be sanctity in its encour- 
agement and power in its restraint. 

Yet further, God requires us to regard our children as 
an element in our judgment. We shall meet them again. 
Face to face we shall all stand, when the books are 
opened. No daysman can come in between us and the 
spirits that have been ripened in our care. Their souls 



204 CHILDREN) HOW TO BE RECEIVED. 



will be required at our hands. These broken circles will 
have one reassembling more ; and there the Judge will 
make that awful inquisition, from which no parental 
heart will be allowed to shrink back. There the question- 
ing will be, In whose name received ye the immortal 
ones ? In the name of money ? in the name of worldly 
success ? or of selfish joy ? or of a careless unconcern ? 
or in the name of Christ ? And whosoever has received 
them in the name of Christ, " he," saith Christ, " hath re- 
ceived me " ; and that sentence is his everlasting reward. 

And now, do any of us ask what constitutes the true 
Christian fidelity of parents, and what is the method of 
this high duty ? Let us remember to ask that question 
of Him who alone is the Guide. He answers it by his 
Word ; he will answer it, even more and more clearly, 
to the sincerely seeking heart. These simple truths we 
know, and may affirm confidently. 

There must be prayer. Your child must know, he 
must see, he must feel, that between your parent-heart 
and Him who is the Infinite Father of all alike, there is 
open and conscious communion. Till there is estab- 
lished, in all simplicity, this confiding and daily inter- 
course between the soul and Heaven, you have not 
received your child in the name of Christ. What was 
testified by one of the strong statesmen of our early 
American history, might be declared, in spirit, probably 
by nearly all the best men that have lived in Christen- 
dom. " I believe," he said, " that I should have been 
swept away by the flood of French infidelity, if it had 
not been for one thing, — the remembrance of the time 
when my sainted mother used to make me kneel by her 
bedside, taking my little hands folded in hers, and caus- 
ing me to repeat the Lord's Prayer." 



CHILDREN, HOW TO BE RECEIVED. 205 

But the whole work, or privilege, of Christian culture 
for the child is by no means to be handed over to the 
mother. That has been too much the fashion with men. 
When did God excuse fathers ? Where is the permis- 
sion for one parent to add to the necessary hours of ab- 
sence from home, at his business, an evening at the bil- 
liard-room or a Sunday in the country ? In order to 
the full and right influence in forming the child's char- 
acter into holiness, both sides are wanting ; God asks 
the Christian father as much as the Christian mother ; 
the Apostles adjure the father oftenest. Buxtorf tells us, 
the Jewish fathers held themselves responsible for the 
guilt of their children's sins till they were thirteen years 
old. In that great reckoning at which we have already 
glanced, the Divine voice will question with both alike ; 
nor does the Lord say of either one alone, of woman 
more than man, that whosoever receiveth the child in 
his name, receiveth him. 

Moreover, there must be regular biblical teaching. No 
child is received in Christ's name, that is not reverently 
and carefully taught Christ's Gospel. Somewhere and 
somehow, not by chance, not at interrupted and infre- 
quent seasons, but patiently, and humbly, and week by 
week, that wonderful, most ancient and Eternal Book 
must be opened before him. Its sublime yet simple 
truths, plain to the child's understanding, its holy person- 
ages, its grand Prophets and ardent Apostles, its vener- 
able patriarchs and its inspired children, must all pass, 
in their robes of light and forms of singular majesty and 
beauty, before him. Its psalms must be sung into his 
soul. Its beatitudes and commandments must be fixed 
in his remembrance. Its parables must engage his 
fancy. Its miracles must awe his wonder. Its cross, 

18 



206 CHILDREN, HOW TO BE RECEIVED. 

and ark, and all its sacred emblems, must people his 
imagination. Without that Bible, no child born among 
us can come to Him whom only the Bible reveals. 

Then there must be a distinct Christian purpose, pen- 
etrating the household, elevating the whole spirit of the 
home, and evermore resisting temptation. There is a 
fable, in German literature, of the daughter of an Erl- 
king whose business it is to tempt little children away 
from parents and home. She comes even into the par- 
ents' presence, and there, with fair appearance and cun- 
ning disguises, she deceives them in her malignant pur- 
pose, contriving to whisper into the ear of the unsuspect- 
ing one many an artful promise of fine shows and happy 
plays. And thus at last she wiles away victim after vic- 
tim into a dreary land, in the midst of dark and shadowy 
forests. Do we not all know of something answering 
to this crafty child-thief? Temptation is the Erlking's 
daughter that never dies. She tears away children from 
the blessed peace of their Father's house, — from virtue, 
from happiness, from heaven. You, parents, must be 
watching, or before you are aw T are your beloved ones 
will be caught and carried into the wilderness. 

And finally, knowing well how little is the most our 
weak arms can do, and how infinite are the appointed 
mercies of our God, we are to bring our little ones, as 
we are to come ourselves, to the fountain's brink, — to 
the great streams of spiritual benediction and grace that 
flow down through the channels of the Church, — to the 
baptismal font, — and, if only their own free-will shall af- 
terwards consent, to the table and love-feast of our Lord. 
Come first yourselves. For where the waters of purifi- 
cation and renewal are poured, there the forgiving voice 
speaks ; and where strength is gained by communion, 



CHILDREN, HOW TO BE RECEIVED. 



207 



there is the entering in of a peace never known besides. 
" The just man " not only " walketh in his integrity " ; 
" his children are blessed after him." May the great 
Shepherd gather us all, us and our little ones, the fa- 
thers, the mothers, the children, into his immortal fold ; 
out of the far country of a wilful and worldly and alien- 
ated life, into the Church on earth, into the larger 
Church, the household undivided and everlasting in 
heaven ! 



SERMON XV. 



ENTRANCE INTO THE CHURCH. 

AND CKISPUS BELIEVED ON THE LORD, WITH ALL HIS HOUSE. — 

Acts xviii. 8. 

The Christian faith is shown to us, in the Acts of 
the Apostles, working out its first simple developments 
in human society. In that plain picture, we see how 
this new force, this divine idea, behaved itself in the 
world of living men, and women, and children ; how 
it acted on them, and laid hold of them ; how it 
took possession of them, and organized them into a 
peculiar institution, which has lived on ever since, — the 
Church. Christ's visible presence is withdrawn out of 
the world at his resurrection ; but thenceforth he ap- 
pears to mankind in the living body of his Church, 
which, holding in its heart and its hand his Spirit 
and his Word, takes the place of his physical form. And 
now, from this short statement I have just read about 
one of the first converts, in the earliest record of Church 
history, we catch a glimpse into the practical working 
of the system. It appears that persons came into the 
Church, not only as separate individuals, but by families. 
From this, as well as several other passages, we find, that 
when the parents, or heads of households, became Chris- 



ENTRANCE INTO THE CHURCH. 



209 



tian believers, so did their children. All were baptized to- 
gether. So, in one place, we read of " the church which 
is in the house of Nyrnphas " ; showing that such a 
group of believers, comprising parents and their children, 
might constitute a church of itself.* How much beauty 
and sanctity there would be in such a spectacle, — a 
church in each house, — and how mightily the world 
would gain in Christian order, purity, and power, if it 
were generally realized, you can readily imagine. It 
corresponds to the whole sentiment of revelation, in all 
the stages of its progress. The covenant made with the 
Patriarch was made with Abraham and his seed after 
him. Throughout the Mosaic period, children were in- 
cluded with their fathers in all the blessings of the elder 
Testament. " The promise is unto you and your chil- 
dren" is the constant doctrine through all God's messa- 
ges to the Israelites. We are expressly told, that undei 
Christ, in the New Testament, the same covenant is 
renewed, only expanded and deepened. Throughout, 
the law of descent is carefully respected. The hered- 
itary tie is recognized. Offspring, at birth, are sup- 
posed to be bound up in the same bond of Christian 
privileges and helps which encircles their believing pro- 
genitors. Does our practice, in our modern churches, 
imply that this is our belief? 

From time to time you have heard affirmed and re- 
affirmed this view of the birth-relation of children born 
of Christian parents to the Church, especially in those 
bearings of it which relate to the administration of the 

* Irenoeus, of the first age after the apostolic, referring to the adminis- 
tration of baptism, says : " Christ came to save all persons by himself, who 
by him are regenerated to God, — infants, and little ones, and children, and 
youths, and elder persons." 

18* 



210 



ENTRANCE INTO THE CHURCH. 



ordinances, — Baptism and the Lord's Supper. The 
same idea seems to have been received, with different 
degrees of clearness, in former periods. It was distinctly 
declared by many of the early theological teachers, by 
whom God planted his Church in New England, and it 
has found, more recently, a few earnest advocates ; but 
hardly anywhere anything like a real adoption into prac- 
tice, so as to present a church formed after its plan. 
If what I have just said be tenable, then it has these 
weighty and decisive testimonies, for all Christian 
minds, in its justification : first, the undeniable usage 
of the apostolic age, — the purest, because the nearest 
to the Master ; secondly, the explicit sanction of the 
authority of the New Testament on the matter ; and 
thirdly, the analogy and agreement of the Old Testa- 
ment, reaching back to the primitive era, disclosing 
God's whole design for the saving of the world, as it 
opens and ripens from Abraham, or Adam rather, to 
Jesus of Nazareth. 

My object at present is not only to remind you afresh 
of the important place held by this great truth in refer- 
ence to your personal and domestic welfare, but to trace 
it out into its necessary connections with the whole 
position and constitution of the Church, — inquiring, 
with you, what the Christian Church is ; how entrance 
is got into it; and what are its claims, functions, and 
privileges. Of course, I must confine myself, with a 
scope so wide, to compressed statements merely, leaving 
trains of argument and illustrations aside. I wish it 
might be particularly understood, that, so far from deal- 
ing with matters that have no application to any but 
those who are church-members already, I address my- 
self especially to those who have taken no part in 



ENTRANCE INTO THE CHURCH. 



211 



any public profession, and do not share in the com- 
munion which is the common token and privilege of 
members. 

I. What is the Church ? On the authority of the 
New Testament, I say it is the body of persons who 
believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and Saviour of 
men, crucified and risen ; and so believe in him as to be 
personally conscious of a supreme desire to live his spirit- 
ual life, to resemble him, and be his true redeemed dis- 
ciples. This definition takes the whole qualification for 
church-membership out of the power of sects and exter- 
nal ceremonies, lodging it in the internal region of the 
heart, — among the affections and motives, — whence 
all life makes its way out into speech, profession, and 
conduct. Its only test, therefore, is spiritual, not formal. 
The definition also proposes terms that are strict, with- 
out being absurd, and reasonable, without being lax. It 
requires that the purpose to be a Christian, within and 
without, shall be supreme over all other purposes, — 
take precedence in every deliberate choice, and express 
itself in prayer and in righteousness. Love to God as 
manifest in Christ, and love to man as God's child, must 
be the ruling affections in the soul, — whether they have 
conformed the character perfectly to them, or not. The 
Church is the aggregate of these consecrated souls, aim- 
ing and longing, above all things, to live righteously ; ir- 
respective of names, of forms, of creeds, of age, of place, 
except so far as these affect this internal, central conse- 
cration to Christ. If there were only " two or three " 
such persons in the world, they would be a church, and 
Christ, fulfilling his promise, would be there in the midst 
of them. In all periods since Christ ascended, this has 
been the Church. It is distinct from all other bodies, — 



212 



ENTRANCE INTO THE CHURCH. 



whether scientific, civil, educational, benevolent, moral, 
or even religious, if they are not religious after the way 
and Gospel of Christ. Its boundaries, as it is embodied 
in actual persons, may be indistinct to man's eye, but 
they are plain to God's ; and the definition is plain. 
The Church is that body of people, in whatever age or 
nation, of which Christ is literally and spiritually the 
Head. And any one particular church, here or there, is 
a smaller collection of such people, and so a branch of 
the Church Universal. 

II. How, then, does any individual enter into this 
Church, so as to become a member of it, enjoying the 
privileges and incurring the responsibilities of a mem- 
ber ? I answer, By conversion. This is for all those 
who have been living any time outside of the Church, 
— that is, without the supreme purpose I have spoken 
of, — without a conscious dedication to holiness, with- 
out treating Jesus Christ, in heart and life, as Lord and 
Master. All such must obviously be regenerated, be- 
fore they can be in or of the Church. Hitherto they 
have been living only that natural life, whose ruling 
motives are mere selfish instincts, whose appetites and 
passions were not subjected to conscience, whose bet- 
ter traits were spontaneous and irregular, not having 
taken on the character of principle, and whose exter- 
nal proprieties were the result only of some form of 
worldly interest or policy. In all such persons, there 
must be a new birth of Christian conviction. There 
must be a sincere penitence for this sinful habit, which 
has disobeyed and denied God's commandment. There 
must be a holy heart, with prayer in it, created by re- 
generation and washing of the Holy Spirit. There must 
be a turning about from the old, false direction, which led 



ENTRANCE INTO THE CHURCH. 



213 



away from Christ, to the opposite, which sets the face 
towards him. Whether slow or swift, — and it certainly 
cannot be too swift nor too early, and the earlier the 
easier, — this conversion is indispensable. We see many 
instances of it in the New Testament. In those early 
times, it commonly involved a change of the mind as 
well as of the heart; that is, a Pagan or a Jew must 
change the whole opinion of his head respecting religion, 
as well as the love and motive in his heart. His nomi- 
nal and intellectual belief must undergo a revolution. 
Accordingly, to describe this transfer from one scheme to 
another, we find the terms " conversion," and " believing 
on the Lord Jesus Christ," used in the New Testament 
synonymously and interchangeably. Now there may be 
cases among us of the same radical and mental change 
as with all heathens, Jews, Mahometans. But other- 
wise, and where, as with most of us, there is no men- 
tal dissent from the evidences and truths of Christianity, 
the conversion wanted is only that of the heart, giv- 
ing that up to Christ. Then the individual can clearly 
say, I have resolved, God's grace helping, to be a Chris- 
tian disciple. And whenever that is really done, the 
soul truly becomes invisibly united to Christ, and so, of 
course, is virtually a member of his body or Church. 

But souls may also come into a certain relation to 
Christ's Church by spiritual adoption. And all those, I 
maintain, are subjects for this, who are born of believing 
parents, or parents who are members in it. If they dis- 
cover from the first no repugnance to holiness, no settled 
alienation from Christ, but appear to have had the re- 
newing work of the Spirit wrought upon them in a 
steady and early grace, so that they seem " sanctified 
from the womb," they pass into Christ's Church as 



214 



ENTRANCE INTO THE CHURCH. 



they pass into a self-conscious experience. By this I 
mean that all children so born are to be received into 
the arms of their parents, and treated as the sacred 
property of the Church. The Church lays claim to 
them, from the very outset, as her own. Her pre- 
sumption and prayer for them is that they will walk 
from their childhood in newness of life. She sets the 
sign of that belief and hope. Properly trained up, by 
spiritual teaching and example, under the blessing of the 
Spirit, they are never to know of a time when they were 
not included in God's covenant of promise. Instead of 
being cast out, as little aliens, to run wild awhile in the 
world, having no part nor lot in the blessed Christian 
shelter and inheritance, they are to be always folded in- 
side that security. The Church is to come forward, in 
the person of those parents who are its members, — the 
divinely and naturally appointed guardians of these 
young souls, — and thus press them to its own gracious 
bosom, and feed them on its own heavenly truth ; until 
such time as they are old enough, by their own conscious 
and personal responsible act, to confirm the covenant 
which their parents and the Church made for them in 
their infancy, by openly espousing the membership. For 
I do not overlook the dreadful possibility, that, in the 
stress of temptation, and a depraved inclination, the 
child, even when all this has been done for him, may 
wander off and be a prodigal. He may viciously disown 
the covenant made in his behalf. He may plunge into 
sin, in despite of all. Then his only way back into the 
Church of Christ must be by conversion, as with the 
children of unbelievers. All I say is, that such instances 
ought to be prevented or diminished by wiser and more 
Christian notions and practices. Let the Christian par- 



ENTRANCE INTO THE CHURCH. 



215 



ents continually speak to the young child of Church priv- 
ileges, of the joy and the duty of his Christian heritage 
and home. Let that child have the doctrines and life of 
Christ faithfully instilled into his soul, by domestic in- 
struction and family prayer. Let him be reminded of 
his baptismal dedication, and taught to live worthily of 
it. No magical, talismanic effect is thus to be wrought 
upon him, but a perfectly natural and simple one, stand- 
ing in harmony with all other educational influences, and 
guaranteed also a peculiar blessing. This Christian 
child, like others, must have a spiritual nature and life 
formed upon him, in addition to his natural life. Only, 
this blessed boon of a new and holy heart steals in upon 
him gradually, by way of his parents' eyes and voice and 
prayers, from the very dawn of his consciousness, grows 
with his growth, hardens with his muscles, expands with 
his understanding, and matures in him as gently and reg- 
ularly as any of the growths of the forest or the field ; so 
that there shall be no period in his remembrance, when 
he was not moving straight on towards a ripe Christian 
character, and full communion in the Church. All this 
I place in contrast with our strange and savage habit of 
turning off our little ones to feed on the husks and chaff 
of the senses, till some dreadful wrench of sorrow, after 
they have grown up, possibly wakens a few of them to 
conviction, and drives them back, broken-spirited, from 
the far country where they had wandered, to their Fa- 
ther's house. 

III. This brings me on, as the next step, to the place and 
the meaning of Baptism. The value of that ordinance 
is sufficiently attested throughout the New Testament. 
Christ himself, notwithstanding his divine elevation, sub- 
mitted himself to it that he might fulfil all righteousness. 



216 



ENTRANCE INTO THE CHURCH. 



So early as his conversation with Nicodemus, while he 
was announcing the grand principles of his new kingdom, 
he spoke of the new birth as requiring both the Spirit and 
water. He enjoined its universal observance, through 
the Church of all nations, in his last charge to his disci- 
ples. By studying the design of it in other parts of the 
New Testament, we can come to only one understand- 
ing of its object. Everywhere it signified the entrance of 
the subject of it into the Church of Christ. It was the 
outward sign of that single fact, — the beginning of the 
Christian life. It was applied to adults and children in- 
discriminately ; for we read of whole households baptized. 
Whenever any person was converted, that is, became a 
true believer in Christ, young or old, he was baptized ; 
and that was the only ceremony of admission into the 
Church. After baptism he communed, as a matter of 
course. According to the convenience of climate, and 
the usage of the Oriental nations, this baptism was doubt- 
less by the immersion of the whole body. But, obviously 
enough, what the Spirit sought, as a means of outward 
order and general benefit, was simply the outward appli- 
cation of water, and not the quantity of it. 

With what understanding, then, may a Christian min- 
ister administer the rite of baptism now ? I answer, it 
must be according to one of the three following modes : — 

1. Baptism may be applied, according to the whole 
Scriptural doctrine I have been opening, to the children 
of believers in communion with Christ's Church. In that 
case, the ordinance is the outward sign and seal that the 
children, who receive it, follow the organic law of their 
parents, and are the rightful property of the Church. The 
Church comes forward, and stretches out her arms, with 
holy sprinkling, to claim and bless the new-born immor- 



ENTRANCE INTO THE CHURCH. 



217 



tal. The parents engage, for the offspring, the blessings 
of the same covenant that covers themselves. Parental 
love, if it is Christian, cannot do less. To refuse would 
really be worse than the unnaturalness of disowning them; 
for, in the latter case, they are only turned out of the 
earthly home ; in the former, out of God's spiritual home, 
and denied the saving nurture of the Christian family. 
Baptism is here put, where the New Testament puts it, 
at the beginning of the Christian life. For, as the adult 
convert begins that life at his conversion, so the child of 
believers is presumed to begin it at his birth. Baptism 
signifies a faithful hope that the child will grow up a 
Christian, and a reverent trust that the regenerating spirit 
may already be descending upon him. This kind of 
baptism is so clearly the right kind, that we must long 
for the time when there shall be no occasion for any 
other. 

2. Baptism may be applied to persons who have ad- 
vanced some way into their natural life, not baptized in 
their childhood, and now resolved to be of Christ's 
Church, because they are regenerated, or Christian- 
minded. Here, exactly as before, the rite marks the be- 
ginning of the Christian life : only that beginning lies at 
a later point in the person's history. Here the act is a 
self-dedication, — the individual who comes into the 
Church thus doing for himself what no Christian parent 
did for him. So far, all is consistent and obvious. 

3. But there is a third class. Parents who have never 
manifested a desire to be of Christ's Church themselves, 
nor openly avowed disciple ship, seek to have their chil- 
dren baptized. When this request is granted, if the fore- 
going positions are sound, it must be on one of two un- 
derstandings : either that these parents, though not avow- 

19 



218 



ENTRANCE INTO THE CHURCH. 



edly church-members, are so earnestly possessed of the 
spirit of Christian piety and of all Christian purposes, 
that they are approved believers in the sight of the Great 
Head of the Church, and so members of the Church in- 
visible, — which would always be the supposition most 
grateful to entertain ; or else, where this presumption 
is inevitably excluded, the ceremony must be another 
thing, — an act of pious intention, a consecration, per- 
haps, not without salutary impressions, springing from a 
thoughtful parental regard, but not the sign of induction 
into Christ's body. Let this question be remembered, 
however : Are not parents, not being church communi- 
cants themselves, who provide baptism for their children, 
bound to consider very deeply whether consistency does 
not require them to observe, in behalf of their own souls, 
the same veneration for ordinances that they profess in 
behalf of their progeny ? And how can they expect 
these to obey God, and belong to Christ, if they them- 
selves do not go before in the appointed way ? 

IV. This brings us on to consider the place and sig- 
nification of communion at the Lord's Supper. By all 
that has gone before, that service is not what makes any 
of us members in the Church, but it is both a privilege 
and a duty consequent upon such membership. The 
true formula would be, not, " I commune, therefore I am 
a church-member " ; but, " I am a church-member, there- 
fore I commune." What gives any of you a title to 
participate at the Supper is Christian baptism, because, 
as I have said, baptism is the sign of the beginning of 
the Christian life, whether administered in infancy in the 
parental covenant, or afterwards, on conviction and spir- 
itual renewing. It follows, therefore, that all baptized 
persons are privileged to be candidates for full commun- 



ENTRANCE INTO THE CHURCH. 



219 



ion in the Church, whenever they will personally present 
their claim. 

At the same time, they must personally present it. It 
is an act wholly within their own choice and responsibil- 
ity. Such choosing is wholesome, and, for a free agent, 
quite necessary. A moral act done for a child cannot 
force or bind his liberty when he grows up. The bap- 
tismal covenant only throws about him its gracious 
influences, pledges the Eternal Help in his behalf, and 
welcomes him to the Saviour's organized body. But he 
must be free to live outside if he will. This view makes 
his alienation his own act, and casts the terrible account- 
ability therefor on his rebellious violence, which tears 
him away from his home. His home, and his belong- 
ings, are within his Father's house. On the other hand, 
if he will, as soon as he is old enough to understand and 
weigh the matter for himself, come straight forward to 
the Master's table, he thereby recognizes, confirms, rati- 
fies, for himself, — in fact, makes his own act, — what 
his Christian parents did for him. His voluntary com- 
muning is, then, precisely what some Christians call it, a 
confirmation. 

If we had a definite and orderly system among us, as 
one must heartily wish on every account we had, then I 
suppose a plan something like this might be found at 
once perfectly simple and practicable, and also full of 
most effective and glorious fruits. In every parish, by 
every minister, let there be kept a record of all children 
baptized into the Church. Each year, at a stated and 
convenient time, let the minister call together, as a matter 
of course, but by personal and direct invitation, all such 
young persons, so baptized, as have, within the year pre- 
ceding, reached a certain suitable age, — suppose fifteen 



220 



ENTRANCE INTO THE CHURCH. 



years. Let him bring them under a brief course of 
friendly and religious instruction, in addition to any 
Sunday-school or domestic teaching, so faithfully remind- 
ing them of the parental covenant and other obligations, 
and renewing in this form the demand of Christ and the 
Church, that they come into the fold, and stand pledged 
for their Divine Master ; and, if proper dispositions exist, 
at the end of such tuition, admitting them. At the same 
time, let him offer corresponding instruction to all un- 
baptized children ; striving thus for their conversion, or 
spiritual renewing, their baptism into the Church, and 
their admission to the Supper. When any family pass 
from one parish to another, let them procure from the 
one they leave to the one they join, a letter, signifying 
not only the communicants among them, but the names 
and ages of the baptized children, that they may be 
properly taken up and nurtured in their new religious 
home. Who can tell what noble and vital accessions of 
holiness and strength the Church might gain, in such an 
ordering of her internal economy ? What spectacle can 
be conceived more full of moral beauty and promise, 
than ranks of the young, thus early, and while they need 
the hallowed securities of faith most urgently, pressing 
straight forward into the gates of the kingdom, — this, 
instead of what we now too often see, the shame of our 
Christendom, and the sorrow of all devout hearts, name- 
ly, crowds of bewildered and neglected youths, plunging 
fearfully away, unguarded, into the perils and vices of 
the world, broken hearts, and ruined hopes, and charac- 
ters lost, lost beyond recall ? 

If any are still disposed to inquire why they should 
commune at the Lord's Supper, a complete answer could 
be given only in much greater space than is now at my 



ENTRANCE INTO THE CHURCH. 221 

command. Let these simple reasons enter into your re- 
flections, and not be dismissed till they are pondered 
fairly : — 1. Because God, the Maker of our frame, has so 
shaped and colored the whole structure of our being, that 
there is an exact adaptation between spiritual life and 
progress, and this memorial ordinance. So much is set- 
tled, by the authority of his own word, and by the vastly 
accumulating testimony of the millions of believers, in 
all the lengthening generations of the Church. The soul 
and the Supper of communion meet one another, and 
are meant for one another. 2. Jesus himself, the tender- 
est friend, the dying Saviour, the spotless sacrifice " for 
us the unjust," the divine and gentle Lord, has enjoined 
it, under the most impressive conditions, on all his fol- 
lowers that truly love him, — reason enough, to human 
feeling, if every other failed. 3. There is a personal 
satisfaction resulting from it, — a satisfaction not real- 
ized, of course, to those that have never come where it is 
tasted, but very real and unspeakably precious to those 
that have. 4. It is a testimony to the Divine cause, to 
God's law, and Christ's kingdom in the world ; and 
when the two opposing forces, righteousness and sin, 
God and mammon, are drawn up in as sharp and bitter 
a warfare as they are everywhere about us yet, it is cow- 
ardly and slothful for us not to take open ground, on 
the Lord's side, or on Satan's. 5. And finally, it is a 
means, almost unsurpassed, of encouraging and multi- 
plying holiness, — all the virtues, principles, graces, char- 
ities, that elevate society, redeem from wrong, brighten, 
bless, and sanctify the world. The Supper, for all who 
partake of it, with right preparation, in a right spirit, is a 
mighty quickener of goodness, a mighty guard against 
temptation. My friend, whoever you are, is your path 

19* 



222 



ENTRANCE INTO THE CHURCH, 



so clear of danger, and your soul so strong in its own 
strength, that you can afford to scorn the heavenly help ? 

I know the current objections, — as that you are not 
good enough. Judged by positive attainments, no man 
or woman is good enough, nor pretends to be. Profes- 
sion, in that case, would be arrogant and offensive pre- 
sumption. But, if I understand the conditions of the 
Gospel, they are sincere penitence for sin, faith in the 
Lord Jesus Christ, and a ruling desire to lead a holy 
life, sustained by prayer. Here is no impracticable de- 
mand, — only a heart of love and trust and pure aspira- 
tion. If you have that, you are good enough to commune 
with Christ, and thus to grow better ; and if you have it 
not, you are not fit either to live or to die. 

As to its being a form : that is the made-up objection 
of only a few fastidious and sentimental persons, who 
are not thoroughly in earnest about the matter. It is a 
species of cant, that reappears from time to time, but 
never has much force. Instead of any special spiritual- 
ity, the objectors to forms are commonly those that have 
too little spiritual life to put life into the forms God has 
kindly provided as a lodge for the Spirit, and so faint 
under them, or stumble at them, and find them mean- 
ingless, instead of vitalizing them. The only real test of 
fitness for communion is a cordial, deep, deliberate desire, 
or want, or sense of need, of the communion. " Whoso- 
ever " so desires, and " will, let him come, and take of 
the " bread and the " water of life freely." 

Here, then, our course of thought is finished. The 
whole doctrine is practical and personal. To those who 
are not believers, it says, " Believe, be converted, turn ye, 
repent, cast off indifference and sin, for your own sake 
and your children's." To Christian parents in church- 



ENTRANCE INTO THE CHURCH. 



223 



communion, it says, " Bring in your children, by bap- 
tism, into the dear Redeemer's covenant and fold, and 
train them up for immortal life." To the young it says, 
" Come, early, before ye are weary and heavy-laden, and 
have the joy, the peace, the strength, of faith and right- 
eousness." 

To all, it offers the honors of the Church, the order of 
a reconciled society, the beauty of holiness, and the tri- 
umphant hope of heaven. 



SERMON XVI. 



TRIALS OF FAITH. 

THE TRYING OF YOUR FAITH. — James i. 3. 

The nature of the thoughts I am to lay before you is 
such, that the profit of our exercise will depend quite as 
much on your attention as on my speaking. To yield 
any satisfaction, it requires patient study and a silent 
heart. If this is true, in some degree, of all religious 
themes, it is especially true of one so purely spiritual in 
its character, and internal in its bearings, as the Trials of 
Faith. 

On the other hand, we shall be assisted by the fact 
that our topic touches personal interests, which are im- 
mediate and universal. In one form or another, either 
as a pleasure or as a cross, either with a welcome or by 
compulsion, either in a calm mood or an agonized one, 
every separate soul has to come at it, and deal with it. 
For, at last, each person of us has to be a sufferer, has to 
stand a culprit at the bar of conscience, to be a prisoner 
behind the iron grates of pain, to hold a secret dialogue 
with Providence. 

The forms of trial I shall bring before you are those 
that belong to the commonest experience. I shall en- 
deavor to gather them into such groups that they will be 



TRIALS OF FAITH. 



225 



clearly recognized, and yet will comprehend many varie- 
ties of situation. My arrangement will embrace three 
classes ; trials in religious confidence, trials in human 
affection, and trials in earthly hope. We are to exam- 
ine them in the light of the New Testament. We will 
seek an interpretation of them, that shall be in accord- 
ance with the whole wisdom of God, the whole order of 
his creation, and the divine harmony of its laws. Christ 
is our authority and guide; Christ the prophet, Christ 
himself the sufferer, — Christ tempted like as we are, 
without sin, — Christ taking our infirmities to lift us 
above them, and dying on a cross to give humanity a 
crown of life. 

I think we shall not find a phrase that better describes 
the real end and purpose of our discipline in this world, 
than the one James has given us : " The trying of your 
faith." 

How very different a color these words cast over our 
life, — over our houses and sick-beds, our tradings and 
marriages, our bankruptcies and funerals, — from most 
of those we hear, when men talk together of the chief 
business ! Not to build strong cities and roads and fac- 
tories, not to make swift passages over oceans, or up to 
fame, not to celebrate victories over the resistance of 
matter and the cunning of fellow-tradesmen, not to out- 
wit the elements of nature or a neighbor's policy, did 
God put breath into our bodies, and lay the world under 
our feet, and arch the heavens over our head, — but to 
multiply and prove our faith. 

It takes a great while for most of us to find it out. 
Some of us make out to live without believing it, and 
never see it till we die ; but none the less it is for this 
we were meant to live, and but for this we should not 



226 



TRIALS OF FAITH. 



need to die. It is for the trying of your faith that your 
will is suffered to be free ; that limits are set to your 
strength ; that your desires outrun your ability ; that 
your aspiration transcends your performance ; that your 
energy so often has to droop its tired wings, and sink 
back baffled ; that the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and 
your passions chafe against your principles. 

It is for the trying of your faith, that unexpected joys 
rise up and flock about you; that mornings of conso- 
lation break after nights of sorrow ; that prosperity sur- 
prises you at the door, when you thought it was loss and 
poverty that knocked ; that your alienated child falls on 
your neck a penitent; that the post whose arrival you 
have been dreading, awake and in troubled dreams, for 
weeks, brings you news that turns anxiety into thanks- 
giving, and starts tears from another fountain. It is for 
the trying of your faith, that the alarm of pain sounds 
through your chambers at midnight; that the cry of 
death comes forth from the lips of a man, on whose neck 
the welfare and affections of great communities had 
hung, — a statesman that upheld the commonwealth, a 
merchant that dignified commerce, a physican that healed 
hearts as well as frames, or a preacher whose character 
repronounced his sermons ; for this that a consumptive 
paleness on the best-beloved face makes you tremble; 
that a broken bloodvessel throngs your brain with a 
thousand fears; that scarlet-fever shows its spots on 
your children's arms ; that an Asiatic pestilence sends 
its gloomy heralds on from city to city across the con- 
tinents ; that inward admonitions point you forward to 
a day when all costlier garments shall be exchanged 
for a shroud, and strange hands shall lower your dust 
into a grave. 



TRIALS OF FAITH. 



227 



It is for the trying of your faith, that your little island 
of knowledge is embosomed in an ocean of mystery; 
that the Bible is not all plain to the understanding, nor 
God's voice audible when we are perplexed, nor the way- 
marks of duty always visible ; that the brightest lamps 
are often quenched first ; that 

" the good die first, 
And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust 
Burn to the socket " ; 

that moral purity is not outwardly rewarded, and right- 
eous plans seem to fail. And, what is perhaps unlikelier 
to be believed than all, — it is for the trying of your faith 
that markets fluctuate, banks discount, iron and cotton 
carry your fortunes up or down, tariffs change, gold-mines 
are opened, crops grow or fail. 

It is for this God places us in the world, schools us in 
it, takes us out of it. For are we not immortal ? And 
is not the principle of our immortality, faith in the Fa- 
ther of our spirits, — in his Son, who manifests Him and 
is the way to Him, — in his spiritual truth, — in the king- 
dom of Heaven ? 

I suppose this statement of the true end of life, and of 
God's design with us, would be more acceptable in some 
quarters, if, instead of the trying 1 of your faith, we were 
to say the formation of your character. There ought cer- 
tainly to be no quarrel with a man who has so cleared 
himself of corrupt and selfish influences, as to be able to 
set it up as his supreme purpose to form a right char- 
acter. Yet this preference of the term character for faith 
may possibly betray a tendency in the religious habit of 
the times, which would, if indulged, give narrow and 
one-sided proportions to the spiritual life. 

Faith is the stronger word, and contains a richer mean- 



228 



TRIALS OF FAITH. 



ing. Faith includes character, and also the internal prin- 
ciple, the motive, the germ, the secret life, out of which 
character grows. If we could only escape from the for- 
mal impressions connected with it, and take it on our 
lips, not as theologians, but for the fresh and simple feel- 
ing of every good heart which it really signifies, we should 
find it to express something deeper and dearer even than 
character. Character refers rather to what one is in his 
relations to others ; faith, to what he is in his own heart, 
and thus what he must be to others. His character tells 
us how he will behave ; his faith, why he behaves as he 
does. His character speaks for his conscience and his 
principles ; his faith speaks for his affections, as well as 
his conscience, and plants his principles on the only sure 
foundation, — love and trust towards God, personal sym- 
pathy for Christ, a fervent communion with the Spirit. 
The Apostles, whose insight into the depths of spiritual 
truth always gave them the most exact and compre- 
hensive language, and Jesus himself, insisted on faith in 
almost every discourse ; but although they were contin- 
ually enjoining the virtues that make up character, the 
word character does not occur in the New Testament. 

Turning now to the great classes of trials I have men- 
tioned, let us seek for some clew to the law by which 
they are meant to work together for our good, in strength- 
ening this faith. 

First are trials in religious confidence. I believe a 
great many persons sincerely desire religious satisfaction, 
who do not know where to go for it nor how to get it. 
They wish they were Christian, in the full meaning of 
that name, and yet do not see clearly how to proceed. 
They would be willing to make sacrifices ; they have 
looked far enough into the life of fashion and pleasure to 



TRIALS OF FAITH. 



229 



see how empty it is of all permanent rewards ; they look 
at the tranquil souls and serene faces of thorough and 
consistent disciples, and long for the same peace ; they 
have a general belief in the claims of revelation ; but 
there is a restless yearning in their breasts for something 
more ; and, as the days and months wear on, they are 
weary at making no nearer approaches to a real recon- 
ciliation and fellowship with Christ. 

Let them understand, then, that this is the trying of 
their faith. The first condition of our attaining to any 
real strength of soul, is that we become fully conscious 
of our weakness. Before we can be made fit to receive 
so great a gift as the feeling of being forgiven and ac- 
cepted, — safe, or saved, — it is necessary that an intense 
want should be created in us. Utterly discontented and 
homesick the prodigal must be, before he will set his 
face towards his father's house. There must be a 
mighty hunger in a man's heart, before he will gladly 
seize and eat of the Bread which cometh down from 
heaven. This is the reason, evidently, for the Saviour's 
beatitude, " Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst 
after righteousness, for they shall be filled." Very often 
we have to be kept a long time out of our inheritance, 
because our hearts are not in a fit state to receive it 
humbly and gratefully. It was to prefigure this fact of 
experience, beyond question, that the Saviour himself 
spent forty days of temptation in the wilderness before 
angels came and ministered unto him, and Paul tar- 
ried three years in Arabia before he could take up the 
responsibility of his apostleship. Now, with most of 
us, so short-sighted is our calculation, and so seducible 
is our conscience, this preparation is got by a bitter and 
disastrous experiment. Instead of going into the privacy 

20 



230 



TRIALS OF FAITH. 



of religious meditation, and settling the sharp contro- 
versy between self-will and God's will, as the governing 
principle of life, by a wise reflection, in our youth, we 
insist on trying the world first. So we go round through 
the circle of transient interests, tasting one cup after 
another ; dropping our manhood, and running off, wher- 
ever a siren's invitation calls us, — the senses, ambition, 
money, a fine estate, long life, gay society, — till, finally, 
discovering that every phantom cheated us, every ignis 
fahius led us into a slough, and every metal we struck 
rings hollow, we creep back, and beg of God and the 
Church to take what folly and sin had well-nigh spoilt, 
mocked, and thrown away. Well, if the conversion is 
earnest, and the consecration sincere, the forgiving Fa- 
ther accepts us. But what wonder, if, before he intro- 
duces us into the full joy of believing, or the rewards of 
obedience, he first tries our faith ? Be sure that no 
otherwise can we have that faithful spirit of which 
Christian disciples are made. You have been years 
wandering, unfitting yourself for spiritual peace, because 
out of harmony with God, who asks the supreme devo- 
tion of your soul. What right have you to expect to 
spring, at one bound, into the complete restoration of 
every abused and disordered faculty ? It ought to be 
enough, if, your face being firmly turned towards your 
Father in heaven, he lifts, little by little, the veil that 
hides the full splendor of his presence. 

Here, then, is the trying of your faith. Because you 
insisted on trying the world, God insists on trying you. 
You long for religious peace. Do you long for it enough 
to wait, as well as strive for it ? Are ye able to drink of 
that cup, and be baptized with that baptism ? The 
first lesson God has to teach you, after so much obsti- 



TRIALS OF FAITH. 



231 



nate self-will, is the humiliation of your pride. What 
you are to learn by this discontent is, that you are not 
sufficient to yourself, but must look above yourself ; that 
you cannot guide yourself, but must beseech the Spirit 
to guide you ; that you, being finite, cannot grasp in- 
finite things, but must let the Saviour reach up for you, 
show you where your uncertain hand shall lay hold on 
the rod and staff, and make you one with him. The two 
powers that this slow trying of your religious constancy 
is meant to develop in your soul, are humbler prayers, 
and a more patient feeling after, and following after, 
Jesus. These together are faith ; and their certain end 
is peace. 

But again ; at the same time, and for the same end, 
faith is tried through our human affections. Have you 
ever seen — so as to know how dreary a spectacle it is 
— the trust in Heaven trampled out of a soul, instead of 
being strengthened, by the tortures of grief ? Have you 
ever felt in yourself, in some moment of darkness, a pass- 
ing fear that an impending sorrow would be too much 
for your spirit to sustain ? Have you ever felt the pain- 
ful and guilty doubt, whether you have been carried up 
to a loftier plane of life, and holier states, by your past 
afflictions ? If you have, you will need no farther ex- 
planation of what is meant. 

The first demand of the soul, under such an ordeal, is 
to realize that its suffering has an object. We com- 
monly think we could endure trouble with composure, if 
we could only see what is to be accomplished by endur- 
ing it. Why, why is it ? is the question that haunts the 
aching breast, and disturbs its submission. We must be 
content to suffer without an answer to that question. 
That is the trial of faith. If a full answer were to be 



232 



TRIALS OF FAITH. 



given, there would be no room for faith. Who am I, 
that I should require the Infinite and Eternal One to 
assign me reasons for his counsel ? " What I do, thou 
knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter," is ex- 
planation enough to my impatient curiosity. That is 
what God demands of faith to feel. 

When the smart and the load of fresh afflictions are 
not upon us, we are able to feel it, perhaps, quite easily. 
But how, when the nerves are torn, and the separation 
has come, — when the dead body lies in the next room, 
and the tones of the silenced voice yet linger in our ears, 
and the sense of bereavement presses in through every 
pore of the heart ? Can we realize it then ? 

In such particular cases of suffering, we have to fall 
back, I think, on some reserved fund of faith accumu- 
lated in calmer moments. On your way to your child's 
or your husband's burial, you are not expected to gener- 
alize, nor to reason, nor to draw philosophical deductions 
from a wide circle of facts. God will not be angry if 
you fail to see, just in that bewildered paroxysm of grief, 
how it is well for you to be so stricken. Yet you can 
say to yourself, even then, in the midst of your tears, 
" It is well ; somehow it is well ; it must be wise, and 
right, and merciful." That will be both the trial and 
the triumph of faith. And if you have noticed, looking 
back over your past experience, or out among your com- 
panions, that sorrow is the chief producer of human 
goodness on the whole, and crosses are the mightiest in- 
struments of spiritual purity on the whole, you are held 
to apply that general conviction of your reason to this 
special instance of affliction. If it is a law that a stormy 
air nurses your moral vigor, you must abide by that law 
while the storm beats in, and the waves are high, as 
bravely as in sunshine and still seas. 



TRIALS OF FAITH. 



233 



The settled conclusion God obviously wishes us to 
reach and rest in, and one that he passes us through all 
this mixed encounter of pain and peace to establish in us, 
is this : that in every passage of our life there are two 
parties engaged, — God and ourselves. Some persons, 
saints, find this out early ; and to them pain thenceforth 
loses its tormenting power. Most of us have to learn it 
by a long and gradual trying of our faith. A nominal 
belief in such a truth is common enough. But veritably 
to realize that God is personally present and interested 
in the little gettings-on of our virtue, is a rarer attain- 
ment, and needs a peculiar training. To achieve that 
result, the Divine methods are wonderful. He buffets 
and caresses. He gives and takes away. He sends 
now a providence signal and exceptional, and then the 
regularity of nature. He answers some prayers accord- 
ing to their request, and others by withholding the boon, 
but still thereby increasing submission. He twines to- 
gether motives the most complicated. He keeps gener- 
ous men poor, and lets the selfish and sensual gain 
the world. He cuts off the philanthropist, and spares the 
tyrant. All this, for the trying of our faith. If you ac- 
custom yourself to watching this play of the Divine pur- 
pose, you will find it, apart from your personal implica- 
tion in it, one of the most fascinating of all problems. 
Yet how often do we complain of the crosses as evils, 
and snatch greedily at the comforts, as animals at their 
fodder ! 

The acknowledgment of mystery, then, the frank con- 
fession that our being is folded all about with the un- 
knowable, our light fringed on every side with darkness, 
our little globe swimming in an ocean of unfathomable 
designs, but God guiding it on and caring for every pas- 

20* 



234 



TRIALS OF FAITH. 



senger soul, — this is another end of the trying of our 
faith. 

But there is another feeling under suffering, that fur- 
nishes another trial of faith. Each sufferer regards his 
own burden as peculiar ; and, comparing himself with his 
neighbors, cannot understand the unequal distribution. 
A father sitting in his desolate dwelling, where no chil- 
dren's voices ring as they used to do, cannot discover that 
he deserves the scourge more than his happier friend. 
A young wife, that has suddenly waked out of a trance 
of terror over her husband's fever, only to feel the light 
of life all expunged, and the sun quenched, wonders why 
she is chosen out for the awful fate. A believing widow 
kneels by her only son's coffin, and cries in her despair. 
" What have I done, that Thou shouldst curse me thus ? " 

Several things might be answered ; as, that fortunes 
are never so unequal as they seem ; that, under a florid 
surface, prosperity often hides abysses of anguish ; that 
the forms of sorrow have not so much to do as they 
seem with its amount. But these are not the answer of 
faith, which is, that the purpose of suffering is never to be 
found out by a comparison of merits among neighbors, 
but by considering how it draws the soul in more child- 
like dependence towards the Father. By this principle, 
the right-minded and well-meaning must be tried, quite 
as much as the faithless. Trials are signs of celestial 
favor, seals on their forehead, badges of favorites, crowns 
of honor. We forget that it is just, as important that 
the good should be made better, as that the bad should 
be reformed. Vessels that are to be made meet for the 
Master's highest uses are to be refined in the furnace 
seven times heated. We must learn that it is a far 
richer blessing to be taught what the feeling of the Com- 



TRIALS OF FAITH. 



2Z5 



forter is, and what peace comes with self-renunciation, 
than to go through life in any holiday dance. Just as 
the wise and affectionate mother shows her true mater- 
nal love more manifestly, when she causes her child to 
cry with disappointment by snatching him back from the 
candle he grasps at as a naming toy, than when she gives 
him the costliest plaything; so God often shows a tenderer 
concern when he denies us health and riches, than when 
he grants them, — when he enfeebles us with disease or 
poverty, than when he covers us with flesh or fortune. 
But this also we never should discover, but for the trying 
of our faith. 

And thus, finally, we touch the trials that come to 
faith by the breaking up of earthly hopes. I held the 
hand of a valiant man, the other day, whose body was 
faint with five years of pain. He looked up at me with 
a smile on his white, thin cheeks, and whispered very 
feebly : " They say this is a hard, dark world ; it is no 
such thing. It is a bright, genial world. Christ has 
been in it ; he is in it still." Prophet of immortality, and 
preacher of a victorious faith ! I thought, — here is the 
victory that overcometh the world, for it overcometh suf- 
fering and death, the world's two cruellest tyrants. I 
called him valiant. He was more than valiant, for he 
was patient. The trying of your faith worketh patience ; 
and patience, experience ; and experience, the hope that 
maketh not ashamed. 

I know of few gloomier spectacles than that of a man 
who has been put by God into a sick-room, or into the 
arms of some sharp calamity, to be made purer, com- 
ing out as corrupt in his tastes, as low in his aims, as 
eager in the chase for bubbles, as before. It is such a 
waste of divine privilege ! A great fortune suddenly lost, 



236 



TRIALS OF FAITH. 



by shipwreck or fire, or a convulsion in finance, or a part- 
ner's forfeited faith, is such a splendid opportunity for 
moral heroism as may never come again. A family that 
step down gracefully and sweet-temp ere dly from afflu- 
ence to strict economies, need not go as missionaries to 
illustrate Christianity. How many examples have proved 
that it is not till the fruits of outward labors have been 
swept away, that the toils of the spirit can begin to rear 
the spiritual edifice on clean foundations ! It is the try- 
ing of faith that glorifies humanity, and saves the soul. 

Brethren, the truth we have pondered has a threefold 
bearing, according as we look towards our Lord, towards 
one another, or toward ourselves. "We are entangled to- 
gether in a chain of common feeling, all whose links are 
forged and welded in pain. But we are bound also, by 
the same chain, to the heart of the Redeemer ; either to 
be made more wretched, one day, because our estranged 
and irreligious consciences cannot bear the look of his 
purity judging us, — or to be filled with consolation, and 
animated with courage, because he will judge that our 
suffering has disciplined us into penitence, purged us, 
and proved to be the trying of our faith. We talk of 
carving out our own fortunes, and stimulate each other 
to that transient emulation. There is no way we can 
look on one another so noble as to see rather how each 
is carving his fortune itself into a ladder of ascent to- 
wards spiritual perfection, making all his lot a refiner of 
his soul, and ever adding to that solemn wisdom of ex- 
perience, by which life is directed towards its immortal 
end. Compared with our progress through this sublime 
struggle, and this deep community of trial, how poor 
looks all our watching of one another's wealth, and our 
criticism of each other's movements ! Life is more than 



TRIALS OF FAITH. 



237 



meat. Only as we help each other in that science which 
underlies all sciences, that practice which transcends all 
other labors, the knowing how to live a larger life, to 
breathe a nobler charity, to pray more believing prayers, 
to converse with God, and hold the fellowship of faith 
with Christ, and thus to gain the spiritual mind that was 
in him, — only thus are we really brethren of a Christian 
baptism. Be this our personal consecration ; be that this 
day's vow. May God grant it a glorious fulfilment ! 
For only his love can so work within us, that our disci- 
pline shall be our purification. And only the pure in 
heart shall see God. 



SERMON XVII. 



SALVATION, NOT FROM SUFFERING, BUT BY IT. 

THEN SAID MARTHA UNTO JESUS, LORD, IF THOU HADST BEEN 
HERE, MY BROTHER HAD NOT DIED. — John XI. 21. 

The lowest view of life looks out upon it as no scene 
of the workings and revealings of the Divine Spirit, but 
only as a hostelry where every guest is to seize on so 
many of the good things exposed as the laws of the 
place allow, — to consume what the senses crave, re- 
garding no other than sensual penalties, — to grasp the 
largest handful of comfort irrespective of rights or ser- 
vices, and to push pleasure to the utmost pitch of in- 
tensity consistent with its continuance. 

Of course, this selfish hunt will take different direc- 
tions, according to the ruling appetite ; proceeding with 
some men by a cool calculation, and with others by 
passionate plunges of impulse. But the characteristic 
mark on all its phases is, that it disowns God. The 
whole eager race through which it strains its muscles 
ignores the spiritual presence. Religious accountability 
is an element foreign to it. Duty is a word without a 
meaning. Conscience is only one of the furies. Christ 
is a veiled figure. Stewardship is a visionary fancy. 
The curtain that drops over the grave is of stone, as 



SALVATION, NOT FROM SUFFERING, BUT BY IT. 239 

immovable as it is impenetrable. This is paganism, 
only without its intellectual dreams, or its Olympus. 

This system not only fails to provide for the chief 
internal necessity, namely, the native aspirations, the 
importunities besetting human nature with the demand 
for some kind of a religion, but it also fails to meet one 
external fact, which lies on the very surface of our being, 
and forms one of its invariable ingredients ; I mean suf- 
fering. Suffering is a kind of test of all philosophies 
and all theories of life. It is useless to leave it out 
of the calculation ; for, through the disorders of a mor- 
tal body, through dull discouragements, through weak- 
nesses of the spirit, through a sensitive brain or heart, 
through the affections that weave families together, — 
through some of these inlets, it forces its way back 
into every lot, and will not be forgotten. Life does not 
really become a problem with any of us, till we taste of 
its bitterness. Pain, sorrow, trial, bereavement, — these 
are names of which no man or woman ever learns the 
real signification from grammar or dictionary, but only 
by drinking their cup in a secret experience. Whenever 
they come, that comfort-seeking or Epicurean plan of 
living collapses ; utter despair sets in ; cries, but no 
answer nor strength ; and the least the agonized Epicu- 
rean can do, if he will be a heathen still, and not a 
Christian, is to fly to Zeno's Porch, and borrow some 
crumbs of frigid dignity that fall from the Stoic's table. 

Ascend then a step higher. Here we find God to be 
acknowledged, but more through fear, which is selfish, 
than through devout submission. The spiritual faculty 
has waked, but has not become clear-sighted. Provi- 
dence has returned to the world from which the sottish 
unbelief we were just noticing had rejected him ; but the 



240 SALVATION, NOT FROM SUFFERING, BUT BY IT. 

confession, " Thy will be done," is not so full and un- 
reserved as to include the giving up of the dearest idols. 
A heaven is seen to overarch the earth, — but seen as 
vet through a glass, and darkly, because a film is on the 
joker's eyes. The daily dealings of the Spirit are intel- 
lectually believed in ; but so much of the old earthly 
leaven and habit cling still to the soul, that you hesitate 
to yield a complete confidence ; you dare to suspect that 
here and there some sparrow, or treasure more precious 
than that, may fall to the ground ivithout your Father's 
notice. 

This state, too, like the other, is met by suffering, the 
spiritual touchstone. How does it behave itself under 
that dread ministry ? Welly — but not best. Soberly, 
but not serenely. Reputably, but not quite to the satis- 
faction of its own highest aspiration, nor of true Chris- 
tian friendship. The ligaments that bind it to this 
world have been so long strengthening and hardening, 
that, when they part, a chasm seems to be left in the 
very core of the heart. Self has interlaced its plans and 
desires so cunningly with all the web of life, that some 
selfish preferences linger to mar the beauty of resigna- 
tion, — to keep back a part of the soul's trust, and to dis- 
turb the perfect peace and joy of believing. There is 
the beginning of faith, — too much to be thrown away, 
not enough to live by. Here is a stage of religious 
progress, not less deserving study than any other, and 
needing consolations and encouragements almost as 
much as unconcern needs rebuke. 

This, as I interpret the narrative, is precisely the state 
where the speaker stands, as the language of the text 
represents her. The Bible is a transcript of all possible 
experience, and has some representative for every shade 



SALVATION, NOT FROM SUFFERING, BUT BY IT. 241 

of our discipline. " Lord, if thou hadst been here, my 
brother had not died." There is a mixture of the 
strength and the weakness of faith, — perhaps I might 
say, of faith and superstition. This woman believed in 
the power and love of her Lord ; this was her true faith. 
But she believed that this power and love of Jesus, if 
they had been afforded a chance to operate at all, must 
necessarily have been displayed in prolonging her broth- 
er's life in the body. That was a falsity or weakness 
of her faith. She also seems to have supposed that the 
wonders of the Saviour's spirit were limited to his phys- 
ical presence ; not having learned yet that his spirit, and 
its ministry of healing love, whether to bodies or souls, 
is independent of all material organization or motion, 
and transcends the restrictions of distance or time. This 
Jesus immediately corrects, by saying, " Whosoever, 
anywhere, believeth on me, shall never die." 61 To 
whomsoever believeth on him, the Son hath power to 
give eternal life." 

Martha, therefore, is a type of that faith, — sincere and 
yet imperfect, beautiful for its prompt simplicity, and 
yet not enlarged and disciplined into entire self-renun- 
ciation, — which believes in the Divine mercy, but con- 
tinues to regard personal safety, and the outward society 
of kindred, as more important than the doing of God's 
will ; which clings to, and prays for, the private privilege 
of clasping friends or children in the arms of flesh, more 
fervently than the spiritual purification, the glory of char- 
acter, which may come of their removal. She represents 
all ^of us who fail of that thorough submission which 
rejoices more in being drawn to immortal excellence by 
suffering, than in being exempted from it. Out of that 
second state into a third and higher one — a purer and a 
21 



242 SALVATION, NOT FROM SUFFERING, BUT BY IT. 

calmer one — Christ wishes to lift her and us. That 
will be the state where a pure and holy soul will be felt 
to be of more value than any freedom from pain ; where 
sympathy and co-operation with Christ appear a dearer 
privilege than the remaining of any human friend or 
kinsman at your side ; and where acceptance into the 
kingdom of Heaven, which is God's favor both now and 
hereafter, is more to be striven for than any repose of 
human affections, or any satisfying of selfish desires. 

Saved by suffering, not saved from it ; that is the law 
of life revealed in Christ, — the disciple's prayer, the 
sufferer's consolation. Character depends on inward 
strength. But this strength has two conditions : it is in- 
creased only by being put forth, and it is tested only by 
some resistance. So, if the spiritual force, or character, 
in you is to be strong, it must be measured against 
some competition. It must enter into conflict with an 
antagonist. It must stand in comparison with some- 
thing formidable enough to be a standard of its power. 

Now, the ordinary course of a prosperous fortune fur- 
nishes no such standard. I do not deny that there are a 
few favored moral constitutions that will ripen into saint- 
hood under the influence of perpetual comfort. But they 
are rare exceptions, if they exist ; and he must be a bold 
presumer that will dare claim to be of their company. 
Suffering, then, in some of its forms, must be introduced, 
the appointed minister, the great assayist, to put the 
genuineness of faith to the proof, and purify it of its 
dross. What special form it shall take for each, it is for 
God, who knows us better than we know ourselves, 
to decide. Mary and Martha must see Lazarus die. 
Matthew must forsake all to follow his Master. Marys 
and Marthas must weep, the world over ; the sorrows of 



SALVATION, NOT FROM SUFFERING, BUT BY IT. 243 

Bethany be revived in the homes of distant centuries 
and undiscovered countries, till the lengthening sister- 
hood of suffering clasps hands around the globe. Many 
Matthews, by the Atlantic and Pacific, as well as by the 
shore of Tiberias, must part with profits and gains for 
an unreserved apostleship. The most generous and 
beautiful children — the manliest sons and loveliest 
daughters — must be buried out of some families ; and 
in others ingratitude or vice must spread a far more 
dreadful mourning. And because, in the mystery of 
God's forethought, some souls are to have tasks and 
stations of peculiar honor offered them in his king- 
dom, from these one after another of the dearest and 
most delicious joys must vanish, light after light be 
quenched, child after child droop into a sick-bed, and 
then into shorter breathings, and then into the infinite 
silence, till all are gone, and all is still. Uncongenial 
companionships, unreasonable tempers, unreturned af- 
fections, unrealized ideals of goodness, unforeseen calam- 
ities to property, pinching poverty, slow disorders that 
overcloud the spirits or tire out patience ; — I need not 
enumerate the legions of ever-active and unwelcome 
ministers, abroad and busy throughout men's dwellings, 
never invited, yet forcing their way in, made necessary by 
the weakness of our faith, ordained to discipline us into 
independence of the world, into heirship in immortality. 
How many of us are yet only able, when they come, to 
say, at best, with Martha, " Lord, if thou hadst been 
here, — if thy goodness could have been really exercised, 
— these evils could not have befallen me ! " Whereas 
we ought clearly to say, 16 Lord, in these very chasten- 
ings of friendly love thou hast been here, — not to save 
me from sufferings, but to save me spiritually through 



244 SALVATION, NOT FROM SUFFERING, BUT BY IT. 

and by them ; — reconciliation is better than pleasure ; 
thou art ever with me ; be my only prayer, ' My Father's 
will be done ! ' " 

Christ's own way of treating sufferers sustains this 
view. We fall into a mistake, I think, when we imag- 
ine that Jesus ever wrought those wonders, of healing 
disease, or restoring life to the dead, merely out of a 
personal pity to the sick or the mourners. Infinite as 
that pity was, it took a higher range, and had a diviner 
object, than the mere assuaging of present pain, or the 
prolonging of the earthly existence. Think of it. Out 
of the thousands who groaned and wept in Judaea while 
he was walking its fields, he cured but a few scores of 
maladies, and raised, so far as we know, only three per- 
sons that were dead to life. As mere expressions of 
mortal compassion, how inadequate and accidental must 
such instances appear! How manifest that it was to 
revive the world's dying faith, to gain its trust, to cure 
its disordered heart, that he wrought these heavenly 
works! It illustrates the same intention, that most of 
his miracles were performed in the earlier parts of his 
public ministry, when it was most needful to attract 
confidence to that new doctrine by which he was to re- 
quicken slumbering humanity. So in the case before 
us : very clearly it is not because he regards the removal 
of the sister's grief as the best service his divine friend- 
ship can render them, — nor the prolonging of their 
brother's life a few years, to pass through death again, 
as his choicest boon, — that he cries, " Lazarus, come 
forth ! " at the gates of his grave. If that were so, he 
must have stayed on earth for ever, and extended his 
wonder-working hand over all continents, to spare man- 
kind their calamities, instead of planting in their souls 



SALVATION, NOT FROM SUFFERING, BUT BY IT. 245 

the germ and spirit of a life immortal, conquering calam- 
ity. Accordingly, when he knows that Lazarus is dead, 
while he is touched with tenderness toward the weeping 
kindred, he says plainly to his disciples, " I am glad, for 
your sakes, I was not there, to the intent ye may believe." 
It was their deeper faith he sought, and through theirs 
the faith of all his Church. And then, just as the sub- 
lime marvel was to appear at his bidding, and the still 
chamber to give up its guest, he repeated to the doubting 
Martha, " Said I not unto thee, that if thou wouldst be- 
lieve, thou shouldst see the glory of God ? " And when 
he prayed to the Father, and said, " I know that thou 
hearest me always," he added, " Because of the people 
which stand by, I said it, that they may believe that thou 
hast sent me" How manifestly the whole mercy was 
granted only to confirm that incomparable and eternal 
truth, " I am the Resurrection and the Life ; whosoever 
believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." 
And now, after eighteen centuries, Jesus does not stay to 
revoke for us the decrees of nature, — to be a physician to 
our sickness, or a warder at the door to keep out death. 
He stays, but for a higher ministry ; not to exempt us 
from suffering, but to conduct us through it into heavenly 
strength and peace ; not for a physical or temporary cure, 
but a spiritual and final one ! And so our confession ought 
not to be the half-faithless one, " Lord, if thou hadst been 
here, our friends, our children, would not have sickened 
and died" ; but, " Lord, because thou art here, all our sick- 
nesses, and our dying even, shall be for the raising up of 
our souls, and the glory of God." 

Willingness to suffer for that end, — for spiritual re- 
demption and the glory of God, — this is what we have 
to aspire to, and attain, under the teaching of Christ, and 



246 SALVATION, NOT FROM SUFFERING, BUT BY IT. 



by that cross whereby he symbolized his whole religion, 
and suffered for us, thereby made perfect in his mediator- 
ship. " Happy man," said a gay and frivolous young 
worldling once, when his own nerves were tortured, to a 
more believing and therefore more equable companion, — - 
"happy man, to have the strength of will which can 
thrust its thoughts away, once and for all." " No," re- 
plied his wiser friend, " more happy are they whom God 
will not allow to thrust their thoughts from them till the 
bitter draught has done its work." 

There is another class of moral experiences where the 
principle of this doctrine has an equally direct applica- 
tion, — a class not less needing its support than the be- 
reaved, and having also frequent representatives. I mean 
persons who, having sincerely begun a Christian life, suf- 
fer the temptation of longing more earnestly for rest than 
for faithful submission. They have heard that there is 
joy in believing ; and so they undertake to believe for the 
sake of the joy. They desire a comfortable and quiet 
mind ; and this, though it is a far nobler thirst than that 
of the senses, is still, if it is too strong, tainted with self- 
ishness, and wanting in faith. As there is a spiritual 
pride, so there is a spiritual luxury, and the appetite that 
lusts after it is one of the subtle enemies that beset those 
who have passed out of the lowest stage of conscience 
into the second. There is an ambition to do something 
as out of your own self, for the delight of approving your- 
self, which is nothing else than self-righteousness. The 
mercenary tendency to offer God your good works as a 
price for purchasing an allowance of self-complacency, is 
one that needs to be watched by sincere seekers after the 
liberty and nobleness of true devotion. It defeats its 
own end. Peace never comes in that way ; nothing does 



SALVATION, NOT FROM SUFFERING, BUT BY IT. 247 

but discontent and confusion. Peace comes swiftest 
when you seek it as an end least. Seek purity, seek re- 
newal of heart and life, seek harmony with God, seek 
the society of Christ as a Saviour and Intercessor for you, 
and peace, in God's good time, will come of itself. How 
many really earnest souls of us are spoiling our work, 
because we will invert God's order, and, instead of seek- 
ing faith supremely, leaving comfort for an incident, go 
about to get comfort first, and thus miss faith and com- 
fort both ! Let us be patient. As the years wear on 
towards the deep sunset, we are weary at making no 
nearer approaches to a real reconciliation and living inti- 
macy with our Lord. But do we long for that rest relig- 
iously enough to wait for it ? Stillness is our needed 
sacrifice. Baffled and broken the soul must often be, 
before its immortal strength comes. Humiliation of 
pride, — an utter consciousness of infirmity, — to be kept 
painfully out of our inheritance, — fasting and mortified 
ambition, — forty days in the wilderness, — three years 
in Arabia, — all these are the price of conquest. Do not 
pray for exemption from them, but for victory by them. 
Homesick the prodigal must be before he will set his face 
towards his father's house. Except I am taught my 
weakness, I shall not let the Saviour reach up for me, and 
place my groping, uncertain hand on the eternal rock. 
What right have we to say, " Lord, if thou hadst been 
here, doubts and ditficulties would not have tormented 
us, — our hearts would not have died within us," — when 
those doubts and difficulties are only the remaining echoes 
of our former disobedience ? Enough if we can say, 
" Lord, because thou hast promised to be with us, we 
will bear them, and wait thy will! Not from this suf- 
fering, but by its purifying ministry, will we hope and 
beseech that we may be saved ! " 



248 SALVATION, NOT FROM SUFFERING, BUT BY IT. 

Further still, if you will, you may generalize this in- 
struction, so as to make it embrace all those many in- 
stances where the disappointed and the afflicted grieve 
over some of the attendant circumstances of their losses, 
vexing their sympathies with the superfluous doubt 
whether some care was not omitted, whether the fatal 
blow might not have been warded off! When shall we 
learn that God takes all the past into his secure keeping, 
and only disapproves the energy and despair that would 
knock against its closing gate ? When shall we believe 
that even out of the sorrows we might have prevented, 
but did not, we may now draw a spiritual benefit greater 
than to have prevented them ? Vain cry, " Lord, if 
thou hadst been here ! " Better to receive and bless him, 
in whatever robes of darkness, when he comes. 

The doctrine pronounces no remonstrance against sor- 
row ; its very aim is to show the rightful place it has in 
maturing the loftiest fruits of character ; — nor against 
tears ; how can it, when it is in the very scene before us 
that we see how " Jesus wept " ? It was no dainty sen- 
timentalist, but one of the stoutest-hearted men of our 
Saxon blood, who wrote : " Weeping is the discharge of 
a big and swelling grief ; and therefore, he that never had 
such a burden upon his heart as to give him opportunity 
thus to ease it, has one pleasure in this world yet to 
come." 

" Where sorrow 's held intrusive, and turned out, 
There wisdom will not enter, nor true power, 
Nor aught that dignifies humanity." 

Paul found the secret of the wisdom that at once allows 
these tender alternations of human feeling, and yet sub- 
jects them to a holier faith : " They that weep should be 
as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though 



SALVATION, NOT FROM SUFFERING, BUT BY IT. 249 

they rejoiced not." Because there is a life, possible to 
the soul through the Spirit, in which fear and mourning 
and suffering and death itself are swallowed up, and lost, 
like bubbles on some calm, deep stream. 

" ' I know/ is all the mourner saith, 
1 Knowledge by suffering entereth, 
And life is perfected by death ; — 

" 'I am content to touch the brink, 
Of pain's dark goblet, and I think 
My bitter drink a wholesome drink. 

" 1 1 am content to be so weak : 
Put strength into the words I speak, 
For I am strong in what I seek. 

" ' I am content to be so bare 
Before the archers ; everywhere 
My wounds being stroked by heavenly air. " 

" ' Glory to God, — to God/ he saith ; 
' Knowledge by suffering entereth, 
And life is perfected by death.' " 

This, then, is the faith in which our life is to be lived, 
and our burdens are to be borne. And these are the 
steps towards that conclusion : first, that suffering is dis- 
ciplinary ; secondly, that, if our desires reach only after 
exemption from it, we pray but half-faithless prayers ; and 
thirdly, that the true conquest and peace of faith, as well 
as the solution of the mystery of sorrow, lie only in our 
willingness to suffer, so far as it may bring us to the so- 
ciety and communion of our Lord. Not from suffering, 
but through it into life eternal, is the Christ-like longing 
of the believer and the Church. 

It has been a saying in the German Church, a All sor- 
row ought to be Heim-weh, homesickness." Let recon- 
ciliation with the Father be home, — let the peace of 



250 SALVATION, NOT FROM SUFFERING, BUT BY IT. 

faith, let the bosom of the Lord where the head of the 
beloved disciple lay, let present goodness, be home, as 
well as the future heaven, and in the tender and holy 
spirit of our religion we may adopt the aphorism. No 
pain that aches for immortal purity can be dreadful. No 
grief that strengthens your aspiration for triumph over 
sin, and the holiness of Christ's heart, can be a calamity. 
Over no falling tears and heaving sighs that wash your 
affections white, and put temptation under your feet, and 
throw open a clear and fearless communion with God, 
can you ever exclaim, " Lord, if thou hadst been here, 
these would not have befallen me " ; but rather, " Be these 
my perpetual, solemn guests, if thereby, in this thy in- 
ward presence, and with these immortal gifts, thou, my 
Lord, may est be led to draw nigh, and come to me ! " 

Immortal gifts ! " This is the victory that overcometh 
the world, even your faith." There is no one of us, not the 
weakest, not the timidest, that may not pass through the 
furnace of trial, and under the shadows of death, with the 
song of that triumph on his lips. When a community of 
religious women, in Paris, during the fury of the French 
Revolution, which swept innocence and beauty into one 
destruction with crime and tyranny, were condemned to 
the guillotine, the youngest victims passed through the 
stormy streets, where terror reigned, to their execution, 
raising in serene voices the sublime hymn, Veni Creator. 
Never before, the listeners thought, had that anthem of 
majestic praise been so divinely sung, — so much as if 
the chant of heaven itself floated down and mingled in 
the melody. The celestial song did not cease when they 
ascended the stairs of the scaffold, and the work of butch- 
ery went on. Voice after voice had to drop from the 
chorus, as face after face bent under the axe; and at 



SALVATION, NOT FROM SUFFERING, BUT BY IT. 251 

length one voice was heard alone sustaining the holy 
strain, with no faltering or cadence, even while the bloody 
blade fell and sealed the last martyr's testimony. Not 
by scaffolds, not through blood, but by silent martyr- 
doms, by slow sufferings, as sharp I think sometimes, and 
needing the heroism of patience more, must faithful spir- 
its still walk towards God, their hands in their Master's, 
" Thy rod and thy staff comforting." 

Submission like this binds the sisters of Lazarus to 
every mourner of to-day ; for they all stand in the per- 
sonal friendship of the risen Intercessor. Jesus came to 
his friend's grave and wept. O scene of unspeakable 
consolation under the shadow of the Mount of Olives ! 
Shed the light, that broke there on a weeping household, 
into every kneeling and lamenting family among us ! 
Unite our kindred, under the dispensation of grief, in the 
everlasting sympathy of one Lord and one faith, with 
that comforted house where Mary chose the good part, 
and felt safe at her Redeemer's feet ! Make us also 
dwellers at Bethany, because Christ comes again to us ; 
and though our brother dies, yet we know henceforth that 
our Redeemer liveth, and that whosoever liveth and be- 
lieveth in him shall never die ! 

Be this our Easter thanksgiving! Be this the conso- 
lation promised to them that mourn with a disciple's 
trust, — the hope for the dead who died in their Lord, — 
the inspiration of the living who have yet to die, — that 
immortality is brought to light, and that, through suffer- 
ing, souls may still be made perfect. 



SERMON XVIII. 



DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 

FOR IN HIM (CHRIST) DWELLETH ALL THE FULNESS OF THE 

GODHEAD BODILY. Col. ii. 9. 

ALL THINGS THAT THE FATHER HATH ARE MINE. John Xvi. 15. 

So long as the differences of opinion that obtain at 
present respecting the rank and nature of the Son of 
God shall continue to divide and interest those minds 
that think at all on religious topics, and so long as any- 
thing like the existing postures of sects and doctrines 
shall remain, it can hardly be unreasonable for any man 
to offer a careful and deliberate exposition of his belief 
on that subject. If we are Christians at all, Christ is the 
author and founder of our faith. He is the Head of that 
Church into which disciples gather for fellowship. The 
question what and who he is, to all persons of any spir- 
itual consciousness, is vital at every point, and momen- 
tous under every aspect. 

There are two prevalent apprehensions of the charac- 
ter and office of Jesus as Saviour of the world. One 
contemplates him as specially appointed to represent the 
perfection of humanity, meaning by humanity what we 
have hitherto known or conceived of the spiritual powers 
and possibilities in a human being. This view holds 



DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 



253 



Jesus to have been a perfect man ; the completest moral 
example and religious genius of our race; exhibiting in 
his life and death the utmost that human excellence can 
do or be ; as showing the ultimate achievement, thus far 
at least, of a man's virtue, love, and faith ; and as having 
withdrawn his personal presence and power from the 
world at his ascension, so that the communion of his fol- 
lowers is not literally a communion with him, but is only 
a commemorative observance for a Teacher living on 
earth in the past, but retired now into the heavens. 

The other view regards Christ as showing forth not 
only a perfect humanity, but also and primarily God him- 
self ; representing God to man, as well as man to him- 
self; being the express image of God's person; being 
God in the act and character of revealing or manifesting 
himself, creating and saving the world ; separate at no 
point from God's sovereignty, nor knowing, in his divin- 
ity, any limitation or abridgment from the fulness of God ; 
exhibiting, as in God's behalf, through a union of nature 
with the Father not explicable to us, the Divine attri- 
butes ; and reconciling alienated souls by manifesting 
God in his flesh. According to this doctrine, he survives 
in his Church to this day, and will survive, not only by 
influence and memory, but by the presence of his person ; 
a distinct and everlasting person in himself, without be- 
ginning of days or end of years, the same yesterday, to- 
day, and for ever. 

The latter of these two views appears to me not only 
incorqparably the most benignant and precious, but to 
stand towards the other in the relation of truth to error; 
to be charged with inestimable benefits to our religious 
progress ; to be liable to fewer theological perversions, 
and less dangerous abuses ; and to need also that it be 
22 



254 



DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 



more distinctly asserted and impressed on our present 
habits of thinking, especially among the inquiring and 
the young. 

A common form of stating the doctrine, that Christ 
was merely human, and of denying him a distinctive Di- 
vinity, is to say that " he was distinguished and exalted 
above other men, not in kind, but in degree only " ; that 
he transcended mortals only by an excess of virtue, not 
by any peculiarity of being, not by any singularity of 
existence, not by a superhuman nature. He was purer 
and holier than other men ; and therefore more of the 
Divine afflatus flowed through his life. 

Against this misconstruction of the whole foundation- 
work of Christian doctrine, as it seems to me, — injuri- 
ous, like most other religious errors, by its issues in prac- 
tical piety, as well as radically mischievous to theology, 
comprehensively mistaking as to the very being and au- 
thority of him who is the centre, the fountain, the em- 
bodiment of whatever we have that we can call religion, 
— I raise a threefold objection. And I urge that objec- 
tion by an appeal to the grand, threefold source, where 
alone we can apply for a final decision : the Word, or 
the New Testament writings ; History, or the organic 
working of Christian life through the Church ; and the 
Soul, with its best intuitions and its wants. 

I should be willing, in the appeal to that first and chief 
of all authorities and testimonies, the New Testament, 
to waive every reference to the other striking passages 
that will appear in their natural connections as we press 
farther into the subject, and to rest the question on the 
three following explicit ones alone. Just as Jesus was 
opening his ministry at Jerusalem, John the Forerunner 
said of him these plain words : " He that cometh from 



DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 



255 



heaven is above all. He whom God hath sent speaketh 
the words of God ; for God giveth not the Spirit by meas- 
ure unto him. He that believeth on the Son hath ever- 
lasting life ; and he that believeth not the Son shall not 
see life." Were these words spoken of an extraordinary 
mortal, constituted and endowed no otherwise than as 
you are and I am ? Almost at the same moment, Jesus 
was holding one of his first reported conversations with 
the Rabbi Nicodemus by night, where he announces 
some of the sublime principles of his kingdom, and the 
profound mystery of the second birth. And this is the 
well-weighed avowal by which he initiates this inquiring 
representative of the old religion into the great secret of 
the new : " God so loved the world, that he gave his only 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should 
not perish, but have everlasting life. And he that be- 
lieveth not is condemned." Is this the utterance of a 
being who u differs from other men in degree only, but 
not in kind " ? Many years had passed since the Sav- 
iour's crucifixion ; the Gospel had been tested and tried 
by the terrible ordeal of the Apostolic age ; and yet time 
enough had not passed to drift the believer away from 
his anchorage on the simplicity of the Master's original 
teaching ; and then one who was able to know whereof 
he affirmed wrote to the reluctant converts from Juda- 
ism : " God, who at sundry times and in divers man- 
ners spake in time past unto the fathers by the Prophets, 
hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son ; whom 
he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he 
made the worlds ; who, being the brightness of his glory, 
and the express image of his person, and upholding all 
things by the word of his power, when he had by him- 
self purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the 



256 



DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 



Majesty on high ; being made so much better than the 
angels, as he hath obtained a more excellent name than 
they. For unto which of the angels said he at any time, 
4 Thou art my Son : this day have I begotten thee ' ? " 
Which one, then, of all the heroes, sages, saints, of any 
nation, commemorated by monuments, by literature, by 
private veneration, shall claim to be brother, in kind or 
in degree, of him whom even all the angels of God are 
commanded to worship ? 

But I must add here a few of the weighty declarations 
of Jesus himself, so grand, so comprehensive, so clear 
and unhesitating, so almost overwhelming in the solemn 
awe they awaken while we read, that to suppose them 
uttered by any being not divine, not an eternal dweller 
in the very bosom and sonship of the Father, would seem 
a strange infatuation. " All power is given unto me, in 
heaven and on earth." " All things that the Father hath 
are mine." " Believe me, that I am in the Father, and 
the Father in me." " He that hath seen me, hath seen 
the Father." " I and my Father are one." " The Fa- 
ther hath committed all judgment unto the Son." " If 
ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it." " As 
the Father knoweth me, even, so know I the Father." 
" Thy sins are forgiven thee." " I give unto them eter- 
nal life." " No man taketh my life from me ; I have 
power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." 
" No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came 
down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in 
heaven." As sure as words have any meaning, these are 
not the words of a man. They are the words of God. 

The second appeal is to Christian History, or the or- 
ganic working of Christian life through the Church. Be- 
gin where you will, at any point from the least conspic- 



DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 



257 



uous movement of the public mind in Christendom 
chronicled in last evening's newspaper, up to Constan- 
tine's political conversion or Nerva's royal concession, 
and you will find that, whether you strike down below 
the surface of events, or reach out either way to trace 
their sequence and interdependence, the under-tide that 
bears all up and sweeps all along is the irresistible cur- 
rent of Christ's divine life. Changes with which no 
other change compares, revolutions for which no civil 
revolution can account, impulses of thought, conquests 
of science, growths of institutions, marches of learning 
and society, — all testify that a silent power was cradled 
in the manger at Bethlehem, which was to dwarf down 
the empire of Caesars and Bonapartes into the puny dy- 
nasties of nursery games. All the growing multitudes, 
achievements, industry, enterprise, discoveries, wisdom, 
and strength of the race, lift a chant of thanksgiving that 
has grown louder from the first, and is swelling still, to 
proclaim Christ the Divine Regenerator of its destinies, 
the Infinite and Eternal Head over his Church. 

The third appeal is to the Soul, with its intuitions and 
its wants. "Whenever it is most deeply stirred by peni- 
tence, or strained by agony, or kindled into holy aspira- 
tion, the spiritual nature craves a more intimate com- 
munion with God than would be possible if that God 
had not mysteriously manifested himself in flesh ; not a 
sovereign in the skies, but a beating and friendly bosom 
in Bethany. It cries out for the Christ, who, by bearing 
to us the pity and pardon of the Father, is Way and 
Truth and Life. The individual heart, when it is really 
agitated, whether by hope or love or pain or fear, empha- 
sizes the promise of revelation ; and the longings of the 
individual soul respond to the broad verdict of history. 

22* 



258 



DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 



It confesses, like Peter before the persecutors, that there 
is no other name under heaven, given among men, where- 
by it can be saved. 

Objectors start other theories. It has been said, for in- 
stance, that even in our human nature there are capacL 
ties so noble, and traits so high, that we do Christ honor 
enough when we allow him to possess an unprecedented 
and complete combination of them. I believe, on the 
contrary, that, in the essential peculiarity of his nature, 
Christ is as distinct from us as the spiritual nature in us 
is from the perishable, as God is from man. 

I acknowledge that in mere humanity there is " a na- 
ture transcendently great and sacred," a nature so sur- 
passing the animal organization, so wonderfully superior 
to this chemical compound that we call the body, so far 
outstripping in its reach, capacity, and eternal duration, 
all the energy and acuteness of physical sense, so fitted 
to receive the impression and inspiration of God's Spirit, 
that it may be even said, in a certain liberal use of lan- 
guage, to be kindred to God, or, in an Apostle's vivid 
phrase, to be " a partaker of the divine nature." Thank 
Christ also for this very assurance, — for without him 
you never could have felt it, — that man is, every man is, 
immortal as well as mortal, a spirit as well as dust, allied 
to the Almighty while he is hastening to a grave. Re- 
joice in that great boon ; and let the conscious dignity 
of such a conviction bear you up into a life of lofty vir- 
tue, that shall be worthy of such a heritage. And yet 
there is that in Jesus Christ which separates him even 
from this spiritual nature in humanity, distinguishes him 
from the best dignity in man, and exalts him above even 
our highest honors. There is a line drawn between his 
soul and our souls, not cutting us off from his perfect 



DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 



259 



sympathy, not barring us from his fellowship, not veiling 
his face with any dimness from ours, but marking us, in 
our nature, as human ; and him, in his nature, as divine. 

We are encouraged, it is true, to call ourselves chil- 
dren of the Most High ; but if we call ourselves so in an 
humble temper, remembering what sins penitence has to 
deplore, we shall never confound our filial relation with 
that of him who could utter the sublime and mysterious 
challenge both to philosophy and faith, " I and my Fa- 
ther are one." " Behold," says an Apostle, " now are we 
the sons of God." But it must be an irreverent self-con- 
ceit and a shallow insight that can mistake this thankful 
confession for a bold assertion of the believer's equality 
with him whom the Church and the Gospel unite in re- 
vering as the Son of God, and who received that ma- 
jestic anointing and seal upon his authority, when the 
Spirit descended visibly upon him in Jordan, and a voice 
said, " This is my Beloved Son ; hear him." " Only- 
begotten Son " it is written ; what means that signifi- 
cant word, " only-begotten," if Jesus is not a Son in some 
sense that we are not, and never can be, sons ? 

Another form taken by the argument for Christ's sim- 
ple humanity is this, — that every member of the human 
family is capable of certain lofty spiritual exercises, is 
visited by holy aspirations, has a moral sense that distin- 
guishes between right and wrong, and can form " ideas 
of truth, of justice, of holiness." These ideas and affec- 
tions, it is argued, are God within us ; because they are 
in harmony with his character, and it is by them that we 
recognize his attributes. In Christ these moral ideas 
were held with peculiar clearness and power ; these spir- 
itual affections moved in extraordinary purity and con- 
stancy. This fact, therefore, is held to satisfy all that 



260 



DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 



language of Christ and his Apostles where he is declared 
to be one with God, and to exhaust the meaning of those 
passages that attribute to him a quite superhuman na- 
ture. He had in him more of God than we. only by as 
much as he gave to those ideas and affections, possible 
to him and us alike, a fuller development than we. 

Now, this explanation is as unsatisfactory as the pre- 
ceding: it grows more and more unsatisfactory, the 
longer I study the facts of Christ's ministry, the words 
spoken by him, or his effect on the world. Those 
facts are miraculous, or they are an imposition. Those 
words are an assertion of a union between Jesus and the 
Father altogether peculiar and distinctive and complete, 
or they are deceptions. That effect on the world must 
be accounted for by an agency behind it entirely above 
all other known historical motive powers ; or else it is 
brought about by some artifice superlatively cunning, a 
legerdemain more incredible than miracle itself. The 
facts : — When I behold, through those impregnable 
narratives where sharp-eyed and cavilling criticism has 
sought and sought again, but never found, a flaw or crev- 
ice large enough to enter one splitting wedge, those com- 
pact records where the persevering batteries of unbelief, 
shifting their point and method of attack with every 
shifting current of sceptical speculation, have never 
opened a single breach, — behold Lazarus coming forth 
from his grave, the dumb speaking, the blind seeing, the 
shrunken hand of palsy full and flexible with the circula 
tions of health, the stone over his own sepulchre rolled 
away, and doubting Thomas putting his fingers into the 
print of the nails, his hand into the spear-wound in the 
side, till he exclaims, " My Lord and my God ! " — then 
I am compelled to recognize a present Divinity, of which 



DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 



261 



no field of human history anywhere gives a token, no 
breath from any chamber of the past, its marvels of lit- 
erature, philosophy, or enterprise, yields a whisper. The 
words : — When I hear him saying, not with any trace 
of fanatical excitement or transient enthusiasm, but with 
that calm authority of unmistakable truth to which all the 
results unite in bearing confirmation : " No man knoweth 
the Father, but the Son ; the only-begotten Son who is 
in the bosom of the Father, he hath revealed him"; "Be- 
fore Abraham was, I am " ; "I am the resurrection and 
the life " ; " Whosoever shall confess or deny me before 
men, him will I also confess or deny before my Father 
and his angels " ; "I came forth from God " ; — then, lis- 
tening while he thus " speaks as man never spake," it is 
as impossible for me to doubt the authenticity of his 
speech as it would be irrational for me, admitting that, 
to deny that there is a proper Divinity in him that he does 
not share with me, and that I cannot share with him. 
The effect on the world : — When we have it thrust upon 
our convictions by every fragment of historic testimony, 
by even heathen Pliny and infidel Gibbon themselves, by 
all monuments of human progress, and by all the civili- 
zation of to-day, and all the spreading life of the Church 
always, that since the moment when Christ came up out 
of the Jordan, wet with the baptism of John, and with 
the glory of his heavenly consecration shining upon him, 
a new principle has been steadily working in the heart 
of human things, to transform them, new in form and in 
spirit, in name and in essence ; — then how are we to 
escape believing, that, if God was in the building of the 
world, it was not man that by regeneration created it 
anew ? 

Choose out any of the brighter luminaries that have 



262 



DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 



poured splendor on any path of thought, or blessings on 
any interest of the world's welfare, — 

"Men whose great thoughts possess us like a passion, — 
Thoughts which command all coming times and minds ; 
Whose names are ever on the world's hroad tongue, 
Like sound upon the falling of a force ; 
Men whom we build our love round, like an arch 
Of triumph, as they pass us on their way 
To glory and to immortality " ; — 

take the mightiest in influence, the richest in knowledge, 
the nimblest in genius, the purest in excellence, — Plato 
or Humboldt or Shakespeare or Fenelon, — and then, if 
your reverence will bear the shock, imagine him using 
any of those majestic expressions, respecting his origin 
and his work, which I have quoted from the lips of 
Jesus ; and, though you had begun to doubt, you will be 
startled back into a sense of the real Divinity of the Re- 
deemer. Conceive that philosopher, poet, or statesman, 
standing before the Eternal and Almighty Father, under 
the shadow of impending death, and uttering that peti- 
tion in the prayer of the Lord, " And now, O Father, 
glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which 
I had with thee before the world was ; for thou lovedst 
me before the foundation of the world," — you will need 
no other proof how far our idle speculations wander from 
the awful bounds of truth, when we speak of God's Mes- 
siah as in kind like men. 

If our God were only an assemblage of abstract quali- 
ties ; if, instead of looking to him as a personal Friend 
and Father, we had regarded him as only an agglomera- 
tion of impersonal attributes ; or if we refined away our 
feeling of trustful intimacy towards him into an intel- 
lectual conception of a Causative Principle, — ■ then the 



DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 



263 



argument I have just noticed might have some force. 
All that would be necessary to make God manifest, 
either in Christ or in ourselves, would be some appear- 
ance of those qualities or attributes in us ; and just in 
proportion to the degree in which they appeared, we 
should all be gods. But, if our view of God's nature 
and man's nature proceeds according to another philoso- 
phy than this pantheistic one, we shall presently be sat- 
isfied, that, though a man were strong, wise, just, and 
good, up to the full measure of the possibility of his na- 
ture, and such a pattern of all spiritual graces as should 
equal the Christian standard itself, yet he would be as 
far from participating in the essential and incomprehen- 
sible nature of the Deity as every other man ; simply be- 
cause his constitution is human; because, being human, 
he is made subject to certain limitations of ability ; and 
because every finite being is psychologically separated by 
an impassable gulf from the Infinite. Christ was not so 
separated. He was one with the Father, in a sense and 
a way that we cannot be one with Him, — in a oneness 
which is at once the secret of the Mediatorship, the key 
to the Gospel, the ground and hope of our final reconcil- 
iation with both ; and, moreover, it is of the " person" of 
God that he is " the express image." The ancient seers 
saw his glory. Through him Moses received his com- 
mission, — 

" Light of the Prophets' learned lore ! 
Lord of the Patriarchs gone before ! " 

Our charter for the liberty of this inspiring doctrine is 
the whole tone pervading the New Testament, from the 
announcement of the Spirit to Mary the mother, — 
" That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be 
called the Son of God ; and of his kingdom there shall 



264 



DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 



be no end," — down to the last benediction of the Apoc- 
alypse, in the name of " the Lord Jesus Christ." It is in 
the language express and general, it is in the breath and 
spirit, it is in the precept and the sanctions, of the whole 
Christian revelation. If you ask for it in a single sen- 
tence, you find it gathered up into that comprehensive 
declaration, " I and my Father are one," or, " No man 
can come unto the Father but by me." I believe, there- 
fore, — I cannot but believe, — I am as unable as I am 
undesirous to doubt, — that, in regard to that deep, wide 
line that distinguishes the Infinite from the finite and the 
Divine from the human, Christ the Redeemer does not 
stand by his nature on the human side. I discover no 
way in which an estranged, lost family on earth, not 
knowing God by all its wisdom, and condemned by a 
law which it had not power or will to keep, could be 
raised, restored, and justified, but by one who should 
bring the Deity to the earth, while he lifts up man to- 
wards Deity. The Redeemer must make God manifest 
in the flesh, mediate between Heaven and humanity, 
show us the Father to move and melt the child. 

There can be no half-way statement here, without a 
wrong to philosophy and faith both. That in Christ 
which is not human is God, — verily, literally, and strict- 
ly God ; as truly God, and in the same sense God, as the 
Father is God. All the biblical language seems to me 
to preclude the conception of any intermediate nature. 
He is spoken of as man, and he is spoken of as God. 
That mystery is insoluble to the understanding. But 
this is clear : while God, to whom all things are possible, 
may enter into human conditions, and pass through a 
human experience, and thus " become man," man can in 
no sense become God. The difficulties in the way of 



DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 



265 



receiving our Lord and Saviour as God are as nothing 
compared with the difficulty in receiving him as not 
God ; nay, Faith joyfully finds that she has made them 
to be, not difficulties, but blessed and simple and gracious 
helps to holiness. For " in him dwelleth all the fulness 
of the Godhead bodily." 

I am not unfamiliar with the several interpretations 
affixed to the passages cited, by those who would dis- 
charge them of the contents I have found in them, and 
reduce them to a consistency with the humanitarian or 
the Arian theory. It is doubtful, judging by experience, 
whether it avails much to undertake a refutation of these 
interpretations in detail, before the heart, by another and 
a surer process, is brought to an inevitable persuasion of 
their insufficiency. They will satisfy, till some special 
exigency of spiritual experience dissolves them in its po- 
tent alembic; and then they look as unengaging to the 
affections as they do forced and unnatural to the under- 
standing. 

If, now, any critical mind is asking what the way and 
method of this union between Jesus and the Father are, 
as if some logical difficulty there were sure to baffle my 
conclusion, and win a triumph over faith, let me frankly 
confess, that no inability of mine to make full answer 
embarrasses me, nor compromises my doctrine. 

Into the interior relations of the Infinite One no mor- 
tal understanding can penetrate. What are the celestial 
adjustments of these revealed personalities; what are 
the modes of intercommunication between the Father 
and the Son ; in what sense he who expressly says, with 
a clearness of authority that no human intelligence dares 
to question, that all power in heaven and earth are his, 

23 



266 



DIVINITY OP CHRIST. 



can yet have that power " given " to him ; how he who 
could say, " Before Abraham was, I am," could also say, 
" Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the 
angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the 
Father " ; in what character, or referring to what office, 
that Lord of all, by whom the worlds were made and by 
whom mankind are to be judged, could declare, " My 
Father is greater than I " ; how it could be that he who 
was in the beginning with God, and " was God," should 
yet enter a child's frame, be born of a woman, be made 
under the Law, pass through a mortal experience, eat 
and sleep, be tempted, and pray and die ; in what man- 
ner it was that he who thus shows himself eternally 
one with the Father could voluntarily veil some things, 
as it were, from his own mind, and, in the wonderful- 
ness of his condescension and the humility of his Son- 
ship, lay aside for a time, not only " the glory that he 
had before the world was," but his vision of some things 
that the Father hath hid in his power; — these are secrets. 
I cannot fathom them. Let me say, I rejoice that I can- 
not. I gratefully adore that incomprehensible existence, 
— the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father. It 
is the life, the power, the spiritual grandeur, the one dis- 
tinguishing fact and transcendent glory of the Christian 
faith. To me Christianity could not be without it. 
A God without unfathomable realities in the contents of 
his nature would be no God, just as a religion without 
mystery would be no religion. In the one case we 
should be orphans, as in the other we should be sceptics, 
faithless and forlorn. 

If it be suggested that these gracious mysteries are 
of a character so different from other mysteries in the 
Divine nature and proceeding, that we ought to reject 



DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 



267 



them, I find nothing in that statement that gains my 
assent. I find no more reason, on that ground, for 
rejecting them, than for rejecting the being of a self- 
existent God, the connection of spirit with matter, the 
creation of a planet, the consistency of the Almighty's 
power and love with the prevalence of evil. In one or 
another of these facts I discover what is just as difficult 
to my comprehension, what is just as perplexing to my 
intelligence, what just as much baffles my reason and 
contradicts my experience, as in the equally well-authen- 
ticated facts of the incarnation, or the subjection of a 
divine Christ to the forms and limitations of a human 
experience. Indeed, it would seem far more unreason- 
able to attempt getting clear of the difficulties by sup- 
posing Christ to be wholly human, than by supposing him 
to be wholly divine ; because we should not only have 
equally grave difficulties to dispose of in the record, but 
others more formidable in the moral problem of the uni- 
verse, the history of God's dealings with men, and the 
actual consequences of Christ's Mediatorship. What was 
wanted was a Saviour coming forth out of the Godhead, 
" very God of very God," at once divine in his nature 
and human in his sympathies, to restore, to redeem, to 
rescue man from himself, — to heal a fatal alienation, to 
put lost man and the Holy Father at one again. Who 
else but God manifest in human flesh was competent to 
this ? While accomplishing it, is it very strange that he 
should sometimes speak of himself, in this condescend- 
ing and peculiar office, as unable to know or to do cer- 
tain things as of himself without the Father, with whom 
he ever dwells in perfect oneness, each in each ; or that 
in this human sojourn he should declare himself depend- 
ent on that whole and undivided Deity, that entireness 



268 



DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 



of the Godhead, from which he came forth into the 
world ? For that also, and for all the blessed spiritual 
comfort, light, strength, hope, assurance, promise, salva- 
tion, it gives us, let us be humbly and most devoutly 
thankful. And let us look reverently up to that Lord 
and Redeemer who in the beginning " was God," — who 
left the Father's bosom for our deliverance from the law 
of sin and death, — who hath ascended up where he 
was before, — who has put it past all doubt or question 
that he and his Father are one, — and who with that 
Father reigns in consubstantial glory, ever one God, 
world without end. 

First among the obvious, practical effects of this doc- 
trine on the spiritual life, stands this, that it seems to be 
true ; and, in the simple economy of God, truth always 
blesses, liberates, and cleanses him that holds it, by the 
same law that error curses, cramps, and destroys. 

It stimulates our virtue, too, and our aspiration, by 
making us followers of a Master whom no attainments 
of ours can overtake, and holding up ever before us a liv- 
ing standard, unattainable in its loftiness, while conde- 
scending, with infinite compassion, to our finite strength. 
Approach him indefinitely we may in goodness ; and yet 
the reverence of our disci pleship finds nurture in this, 
that there is something within him that we can never 
compass. We must learn to dismiss it as a false feeling, 
that, in order to copy our Saviour's example, we must 
equal his dignity ; that, to render him imitable, he must 
dwell on the level of our natures. Imitation for his holi- 
ness, but homage for his Divinity. 

And, then, what encouragement is there for our trust- 
ful gratitude that we are left to no painful questioning, 
whether Christ's word is God's word, Christ's promises 



DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 



269 



sustained by Almighty veracity, Christ's reconciling invi- 
tation pledged by the Father's power ? Faith is made 
independent of doubt; and Hope casts her anchor fast 
by the pillars of heaven. 

Because Christ is the brightness of God's glory, and 
the express image of his person, we know that our sacra- 
ment is no cold memorial, our communion no funereal 
pomp ; but that the Master himself, as actual a person 
there as at the upper chamber, presides at the feast, and 
the very presence of his affectionate spirit welcomes us 
to a joyful participation. 

The whole circle of Christian doctrines clusters togeth- 
er; — repentance, newness of life, reconciliation by the 
Mediator, the Saviour's Divinity, forgiveness, and accept- 
ance with God. Let us bind them in one unbroken 
clasp about our hearts ; live as children of the light they 
shed ; exemplify the whole religion of him whose image, 
" the brightness of the Father's glory," is the centre of 
them all. Bear abroad his spirit, the spirit that purifies 
uncleanness, heals injustice, emancipates the slave, 
quenches strife, humbles pride, works by love, makes 
man the brother of man. And may his oneness with 
God bring our souls to his Father and ours ! 

The chief charm of these high views of Christ is, that 
they do, wherever they are welcomed into the soul, un- 
speakably strengthen goodness, encourage feeble resolu- 
tions, redouble zeal, enliven the Church, bless and adorn 
the world with the fruit of righteousness. For there is 
no spring to individual excellence like the feeling of the 
pure presence and personal intercessions of the Divine 
Master. There is no power to rouse and melt the sin- 
ning soul of unbelief like the condescension of that 
tender Redeemer, who left the glory on high, with a 

23* 



270 



DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 



promise of pardon in his hand, for the bitterness of Geth- 
semane and the anguish of the cross. There is no 
glance for reverent eyes across the great fields of history 
so satisfying and so self-consistent, as that which beholds 
him, by whom it is revealed that God hath made the 
world and will judge all, administering the whole spirit- 
ual government of our race, from Alpha to Omega. 
There is no seed of noble works between man and 
man so fruitful as a hearty faith in the charity and the 
purity of the Christ who took our flesh. So it was, in 
the wonderful adaptations and attuning of our nature, — 
we know not altogether why, but we thank God it was 
so, — that but through him God was not to be brought 
to man. That is our redemption. It is the final recon- 
ciliation of Earth with Heaven. Christ is the wisdom of 
God, and the power of God, unto salvation, to all them 
that believe. We must heed both parts of John's two- 
fold exhortation, — " Believe in the Son of God," and 
" love one another." And so in the blessed communion 
of his Church, where he dwells, looking along the line 
of that bright order of Revelation, — the one God, the 
Saviour coming forth out of the glory of his bosom, and 
the Comforter which Christ sendeth evermore, — we can 
gratefully take up the anthems of the elder time, and 
say : " All praise and dominion to Him that sitteth on 
the throne, and unto the Lamb ! " " Glory be to the 
Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit ! " 



SERMON XIX. 



DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT. 

NOW THE GOD OF HOPE FILL YOU WITH ALL JOT AND PEACE 
IN BELIEVING, THAT YE MAY ABOUND IN HOPE, THROUGH THE 
POWER OF THE HOLY GHOST. — Rom. XV. 13. 

It is a fact of some significance, that both the form of 
words which Jesus enjoined to be used in administering 
baptism, and the apostolic benedictions, associate the 
name of the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Ghost, — for the 
word in the original is the same, — with those of the Fa- 
ther and Christ. It is also noticeable, that, although the 
same term had been but rarely employed earlier in the 
Scriptures, and then evidently in a somewhat more gen- 
eral sense, as applicable to the ordinary influence of the 
Almighty energy, yet, with the opening of the Christian 
dispensation proper, it begins to bear a more specific and 
emphatic meaning ; to be more copiously used as a sa- 
cred household word, very precious to the believer ; and 
to imply, as the least thoughtful reader can see, a pecu- 
liar element of power introduced by Christ. Add to these 
considerations, that Paul refers four great internal states 
and powers of the soul — joy, peace, faith, and hope 
— to this creative operation, and no other reason will be 
wanted for a wakeful inquiry into its import. It states 



272 



DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT. 



one of the living ideas that are indispensable to the 
prosperity and purity of the Church. 

The true construction of a doctrine like this can only 
be settled by a reverential appeal to the New Testament. 
A proud understanding is not competent to handle it. 
Faith in it depends more on a teachable and worship- 
ping heart than an ingenious brain. No man can come 
to Christ, except he will let the Father draw T him. All 
spiritual truths look dim to a worldly and irreligious 
mind. You may pronounce the influence of the Spirit a 
mystery, and so reject it from your confidence ; but you 
will find facts are mysterious, very much in proportion as 
they are unfamiliar. Mysteries lie all about us. You 
cannot take a step without planting your foot on a mys- 
tery. The passage of your voice to my hearing involves 
a mystery : tell me how a vibration of the air commu- 
nicates one man's thoughts to the sensorium of another, 
and how your intelligent commerce with the world is 
carried on through about two pounds and a half of ner- 
vous matter in the cavity of your skull, and I might, or I 
might not, be able to unfold to you how the Comforter 
quickens the soul. " The wind bloweth where it list- 
eth," — this was Christ's own comparison, — " and thou 
nearest the sound thereof ; but canst not tell whence it 
cometh, or whither it goeth. So is every one that is 
born of the Spirit." 

And so, to a sordid mind, never suffered to break away 
from the low enslavement of material interests, the whole 
doctrine of the Holy Spirit becomes a strange jargon, as 
absurd to the sensual comprehension as it is undesired 
by earthly affections ; and the very language in which it 
is set forth, an unknown tongue. We might as well ex- 
pect a deaf man to analyze the composition of Handel's 



DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT. 



273 



Oratorio of the Messiah, as that our minds, in unrenewed 
and unbelieving moods, should recognize the reasonable- 
ness of our being visited, or cheered, or regenerated by 
the Holy Ghost. 

Admit this principle, and it is obvious that, to prejudge 
a spiritual doctrine, at the outset, by some worldly stand- 
ard, is not the way of candid investigation. The very 
property which most distinguishes faith is, that it lays 
hold on matters which transcend all sensible demonstra- 
tion. If I wait for such demonstration before I deter- 
mine what to receive as truth within the circle of my 
beliefs, and what to debar from it, then I forsake the 
ground of faith at once, and come upon the ground of 
ocular proofs or scientific inductions ; proceeding not by 
faith any longer, but by sight, which is a distinct princi- 
ple, and a lower one. By that rule, the less faith men 
should have, the less religious truth there would be ; the 
further their habits got estranged from a religious life, 
the less would God require of them ; and, in order to 
escape their obligation to his law, they would only need 
to neglect and forget it. It is no anomaly in science, 
any more than in religion, for a truth to look unreason- 
able just to the degree that it is held off at a distance. 
It must be studied into, to appear intelligible ; and be 
brought near to the heart, to appear rational. The real 
question, then, stands, — Is the doctrine before us ad- 
dressed to our spiritual insight and our faith by the 
Evangelists ? All our short-sighted imaginings apart, 
what do they teach ? 

The essential feature of the New Testament doctrine 
of the Spirit, as it appears to me, is that the coming of 
the Paraclete is inseparably connected with the media- 
torial office of Christ ; that the Holy Ghost is sent by the 



274 



DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT. 



Saviour in such a sense as not to be fully received till 
he is glorified, nor otherwise than by faith in him ; and 
therefore that this office of the Spirit is something, by its 
conditions and its nature, peculiar to the ministry of re- 
demption, not to be confounded with the ordinary effects 
of Divine power in nature, and least of all to be treated 
as only one among the vague influences found, by a 
poetic sentiment, a half- Pantheistic reverie, or a feeble 
sense of elevation or comfort, in the presence of impos- 
ing scenery, in " the light of setting suns," in the serene 
magnificence of midnight, in the majesty of mountains, 
or the blossoming of the clover, — favored by a tranquil 
posture of the nerves. This necessary and peculiar con- 
nection, in the Evangelical representation, of the Holy 
Spirit with the reconciliation of the cross, has fallen so 
generally out of recognition, in much preaching, as to 
enfeeble the force of the truth, and reduce the common 
notion held in some of our churches to the level of mere 
naturalism. 

The principal passages of the Saviour's instructions, 
where the promise of his own continued relation to the 
body of his Church, and of the coming of the Holy 
Spirit, are contained, are the fourteenth, fifteenth, and 
sixteenth chapters of John. Detached entirely from 
one another, these passages offer difficulties. Each of 
them, taken separately, presents a truth of precious 
significance to the religious affections ; but they need 
to be compared, collated, and held up in each other's 
light, in order to yield a self-consistent and complete 
doctrine. 

Let it be remembered, that this whole discourse of 
Jesus was occasioned by the sorrow and the apprehen- 
sions of his disciples, because he had said to them, " I go 



DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT. 



275 



away." * From the comforting words, " Let not your 
heart be troubled," throughout, it has this bearing : it 
aims to assure them that they shall lose none of the spirit- 
ual benefits of his presence, if only they will have faith 
in him as before. Scattered through it, we find these 
several distinct declarations : — 1. Christ predicts that, in 
some sense, he is about to depart from the society of his 
followers : " I go," he says, " unto my Father." This 
refers, I suppose, simply to the withdrawal of his bodily 
presence, — the disappearance of that form of Hebrew 
flesh and blood, through which he had hitherto been 
manifested to the world, but which, if suffered to remain 
longer, would prove a veil f before his real and spirit- 
ual glory, and contract the universality of his religion. 
2. He promises that he shall come again, and dwell con- 
stantly with them : " I will not leave you comfortless ; I 
will come to you " ; " He that hath my commandments, 
and keepeth them, I will manifest myself to him, and my 
Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and 
make our abode with him." This can mean nothing 
else than that he, the person Jesus, after his bodily de- 
parture, would yet hold conscious relations with his true 
Church, not visible to the fleshly eyes, but felt in the 
quickening energy of his Spirit, and bestowing the in- 
ward influence of his affection on the believing heart. 
For, 3. He speaks of these particular offices which he 
will perform, in the further exercise of his Messiahship : 
" Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do." 
" Without me, ye can do nothing." 4. He declares that 
a Comforter shall come, — a new Presence, to guide, 
strengthen, and assure them, in the difficulties of their 

* John xiii. 33, 36. 

f SiaroO KaTaneTaa-naTos-, tovt cctti, rrjs aapKos avrov. Heb. x. 20. 



276 



DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT. 



ministry ; and that this Comforter shall be sent to them 
by the Father in Christ's name : " I will pray the Father, 
and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may 
abide with you for ever, even the Spirit of Truth, — and 
he shall be in you " ; " The Comforter, which is the Holy 
Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall 
bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have 
said unto you." 5. He teaches that this Comforter 
shall also be sent by himself, though proceeding, as just 
shown, from the Father: "When the Comforter is 
come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, 
which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me." 
Again : " It is expedient for you that I go away ; but, if 
I depart, I will send the Comforter unto you." 6. This 
Comforter is to bring blessings equally from the Father 
and the Son ; for says Jesus : " He shall not speak of 
himself ; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he 
speak : he shall glorify me ; for he shall receive of mine, 
and shall show it unto you. All things that the Father 
hath are mine ; therefore said I that he shall take of 
mine, and shall show it unto you." * 

From these six propositions, different in form, but 
capable of being so reconciled as to be one in substance, 
we deduce the whole doctrine on the subject. They 
exhaust the statement of it ; and every other expression 



* Justin Martyr speaks of the Holy Ghost as " the Power of God sent to 
us through Jesus Christ" (Dial. c. Tryph.), but elsewhere as one of the 
"host of angels." According to Origen, the Holy Ghost is " the first being, 
or nature, produced by God the Father, through the Son." The Latin 
Church did not assert the double procession from the Father and the Son till 
the ninth century. It was many years after the promulgation of the Constan- 
tinopolitan Creed, before the word Jilioque was inserted into it. This word, 
and its doctrine, made one of the five charges of heresy brought against the 
Western Church by Photius the Patriarch. 



DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT. 



277 



in the New Testament is in harmony with them. That 
doctrine can be no other, it seems to us, than this : that, 
after the body of Jesus should be removed from the 
Church, he should still continue to carry on the spiritual 
work of renewing, sanctifying, and saving souls, — which 
is his eternal ministry, — the Church itself thus becoming 
the body of his Spirit, that visible, but he indwelling, yet 
manifest still in the fruits of holy love and life ; that, in 
thus acting on the spirits of believers, in answer to pray- 
er, the Son, and the Father who sent him, are together, 
united in counsel and one in purpose ; and that the 
Agent, now first distinctly revealed to men, by which 
they thus move and draw and change the heart, is the 
Holy Spirit, but also known as the Comforter, the Para- 
clete, the Spirit of Truth, and the Holy Ghost. 

Let us now bring together, in as condensed and clear 
a paraphrase as possible, these scattered statements of 
Jesus and the Evangelist, so as to exhibit a connected ex- 
position of the truth. " In my Father's house are many 
mansions ; I go there to prepare a place for you. But 
this my absence will not separate my spirit from yours. 
It is expedient for you, both to try your faith by leaving 
you to stand alone, and to prevent my religion from 
being limited by my bodily presence and associations.* 
Yet I will not leave you wholly alone and comfortless. 
Let not your heart be troubled or afraid at the thought 
of that distressing solitude. I will come to you again 
invisibly, and cause my spirit to abide with you, in all 
your holy labors, for ever. Be encouraged : my Father 
also will abide with you, as he does now. Only love 
me, and keep my sayings, and you shall feel me with 

* " Si carni caraaliter haeseritis, capaces Spiritus non eritis." — Augustine. 
24 



278 



DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT. 



you. Pray to the Father in my name ; I also will pray 
for you ; and the Father, who is one with me, will an- 
swer you through me, Thus I will continue to bring 
you his blessings. No longer in this frame of flesh, but 
by a certain interior sense awakened in your regenerate 
souls,* quite as quick as the natural eye, I will manifest 
myself to you, — to the true disciples in my Church, 
hereafter, as now. But inasmuch as the mode of this 
manifestation is to be changed, — to be inward, and not 
outward, — you are to know this continued and united 
presence of my Father and myself, through a new Agent, 
— the Holy Spirit, the Comforter. He shall visit and re- 
new you, and be your refreshing. He shall carry forward 
the work of salvation which I have begun in the body. 
Pray for the Holy Spirit. The world, that is, men of 
worldly tastes and gross desires, cannot understand this 
promise. The world receiveth not this Holy Spirit, 
neither knoweth him, as it has not received me hitherto, 
but goeth about to crucify me. That earthly and sinful 
temper He will reprove ; convicting it of sin, showing it 
righteousness, and bringing it to judgment. But on you 
He will so act as to teach and inspire you, bringing to 
your remembrance all the things that I have said to you 
with this mortal tongue. So he shall testify of me. I 
shall indeed be with him, and so with you. By believ- 
ing in the Holy Spirit, you will abide in me, in the 
strictest unity. Through successive generations He will 
build up and complete my Church. Behold, then, your 
privilege and your inheritance. You were just now sor- 
rowing because I said, I must go away. But, except my 
body were to be crucified, you could not enjoy those 

* John xiy. 19. Tholuck observes, that, " in the pregnant use of language 
as employed by John and Christ, £a means to lead a true life in God." 



DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT. 



279 



higher benefits that come from my resurrection. I can- 
not come to you in the Spirit, till my form is removed. 
What you cannot now understand of these mysteries, 
the Spirit will gradually reveal to you.* He shall take 
of my truth, and, little by little, age after age, show man- 
kind the full meaning of my gospel and my redemption. 
It is true, my Father is the sender of this Spirit ; but 
between my Father and me is no division of interest, or 
counsel, or honor. Whoever honors one of us, honors 
both. I said truly, therefore, that the Spirit, in showing 
you God's will, shows you mine ; for our will is one, 
and our truth is one. Only believe what I have said. 
A little while, and ye shall not see me ; for I shall be 
crucified, and ascend from the world. But again, a little 
while after, you shall see me by the eye of your faith, 
and you shall feel me, and know that I am with you, 
and my Father also. We will send to you together the 
Holy Spirit, the Comforter ; and, when I thus see you 
again, your heart shall rejoice ; and that joy no man 
taketh from you." 

Let us next notice the harmony between this inter- 
pretation and other New Testament references to the 
same doctrine. In giving an account of that lofty dis- 
course, pronounced by Jesus earlier in his ministry, when 
he stood, on the last and great day of the feast, and pro- 
claimed to the world his divine invitation, " If any man 
thirst, let him come unto me and drink," — John puts in 
this parenthesis : " This spake he of the Spirit, which 
they that believe on him should receive ; for the Holy 
Ghost w^as not yet given, [or, as the original Greek has 

* " He speaks in a language best adapted to the apprehension which the 
disciples then possessed, as well as to the time, and topic in hand, when he 
speaks concerning his departure to the Father." — Bengel. 



280 



DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT. 



it, was not yet*] because that Jesus was not yet glori- 
fied," that is, ascended into his heavenly glory. This 
shows that John regarded the gift of the Holy Spirit as 
conditioned on the death and ascension of Christ. 

Again, as Jesus had promised the Spirit to be given 
at the time of his own departure, to fill the place of his 
bodily companionship, we should naturally expect some 
signal demonstration in connection with that event. Is 
this expectation fulfilled ? " The same day " that he 
rose from the dead, we are told, " at evening, being the 
first day of the week, Jesus stood in the midst of his dis- 
ciples, and said to them, Peace be unto you! and when 
he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto 
them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit." Furthermore, the 
history is taken up, immediately after his ascension, by 
Luke, in the " Acts of the Apostles " ; and the very first 
sentence contains two distinct references to this doctrine 
of the Spirit, recalling especially the Saviour's promise 
that his Apostles should " be baptized with the Holy 
Ghost, not many days hence. Was that promise ac- 
complished ? Read the full answer in the record, just 
after, of that matchless wonder, the sublime outpouring 
and witnessing of the Spirit, on the day of Pentecost, 
when the Church of Christ received its visible baptism 
and consecration, for all time, in the tongues of fire ; and 
Peter preached, while the multitude praised. 

Passing on into the preaching of the Apostles, as they 
went out on their missionary work, we find their mes- 
sage surcharged with the burden of this great doctrine. 
Everywhere they preached Christ and the resurrection, 
and coupled with these the office of the Spirit, regenerat- 
ing and sanctifying the soul. Their Epistles glow and 



ovttco yap rjv 7rvevfjLa dyiov- 



DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT. 



28i 



kindle with the same animating assurance. The radi- 
ance of that conviction touched with glory their suffer- 
ings by persecution, the miseries of their prison-houses, 
their perils by the wilderness, and the martyrdoms that 
crowned their good confession of the cross. " None of 
these things move me," cried Paul ; " for the Holy Ghost 
is my witness." Whatever fruits of conversion and 
faith honored their apostleship, they described as not 
their own, nor of man's wisdom, but the u demonstration 
of the Spirit," and " with power." Three verses in the 
Epistle to Titus really condense the whole doctrine into 
one comprehensive formula : " After that the kindness 
and love of God toward man appeared, not by works of 
righteousness which we have done, but according to his 
mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration and 
renewing of the Holy Ghost, which he shed on us abun- 
dantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour." 

It commends this construction to our cordial reception, 
that it meets all the variety of our different religious 
habits, suits itself to whatever sincere moods our shift- 
ing experience may bring, and, on whichever of the 
Divine agents in sustaining our moral life we fix our 
meditation, furnishes us a more satisfying image of each. 

Some devout minds, for example, have been trained 
to fasten their religious reverence and affection almost 
exclusively on the Father. Not denying the Son, nor his 
offices, nor rejecting the fellowship of the Spirit, their pious 
thoughts turn most naturally to God as Father. It is He 
that dwells before their contemplation, absorbs their love, 
and reaches down to help and save them. For such, the 
doctrine, as we have presented it, offers the Holy Spirit as 
the gift and presence of that God, his witness, his token, 
one of his personal manifestations to the soul. And 



282 



DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT. 



although, as it needs indeed to be more believed, we rob 
ourselves of Christian peace and power, just in propor- 
tion as we drop out of view our intimate relations to the 
person of Jesus ; yet, as we have seen, so long as we rec- 
ognize him as the Divine Saviour, he will still bestow his 
benediction on the heart that truly worships his Father. 
Did he not say to the Father, " All mine are thine, and 
thine are mine " ? Accordingly, as if expressly to en- 
lighten minds of the cast we have alluded to, the Holy 
Spirit is represented to us as the Spirit of God, — as the 
God that was from everlasting, and visited Moses, David, 
and Isaiah. Such believers will cling most fondly to that 
phrase in the promise, " My Father will love him and 
abide with him " ; and, not forgetting that it is " in the 
name of the Lord Jesus," they will linger with special 
satisfaction on Paul's language to the Corinthians, where 
he says, " It is by the Spirit of God that we are sanc- 
tified." 

Another class — and it seems to us they are apt to be 
Christians of a more fervent and effectual faith — find 
their religious life, not only originally, but constantly, 
dependent on the person of Christ. They want to feel 
the strengthening touch of his hand and the breath of 
his intercession. They are resolute according to the 
frequency with which they sit at his feet, and vigilant 
according as they are conscious that he is near to be 
wounded by their backslidings, or to rejoice personally 
in their moral victories ; and they are constant to his 
Church according as they realize him to be veritably in 
it a leader, a friend, a reconciler. This class, then, will 
listen with most grateful eagerness when he tells them 
that he also, as well as the Father, comes in the Com- 
forter. They bless him for the pledge, " Lo, I am with 



DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT. 



283 



you alway, even unto the end of the world." They 
rejoice in the declaration, " "Where two or three are gath- 
ered together in my name, there am I in the midst of 
them." They reassure themselves with the conviction, 
that, though he went away in the humiliation of the 
cross, he cometh again to judge the saints for evermore 
in glory. And the highest duty of their discipleship is 
fulfilled when they can know that they " abide in him." 

Or, again, if there are others, whose thought turns less 
to the person of either the Father or the Son than to 
that Divine Paraclete proceeding from them both, which 
we have seen to be called by the New Testament the 
Spirit, as actually happens with some branches of the 
Church Universal, — then, provided only they will re- 
ceive it in simplicity, our doctrine makes ready room for 
them also, offering no violence to their peculiar culture 
or affinities. And these will seize on those many pas- 
sages that ascribe the work of renewal to the Holy Ghost, 
or refer the joy and peace of believing to His power. 

By all these ways, in accommodation to all these 
shapings of devout belief, will the view we have opened, 
if it be reverentially studied and welcomed with a docile 
heart, yield confidence and guidance to true Christian 
disciples, of whatever name or fold. 

Nor is it an incidental, but an essential and inherent, 
operation of our doctrine, that it exalts our conceptions 
of the personal work of the Messiah, as the Head of the 
Church and the Divine Agent of man's regeneration. 
Crucified at Calvary, he lives throughout the world. 
Slain as our Passover, he survives as our Advocate. 
Ascended from our sight, he blesses us still by the Spirit. 
Before Abraham, in the bosom of the Father, he reigns 
till he has put all enemies under his feet. In that he 



284 



DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT. 



died, he died unto sin once ; but in that he liveth, he 
liveth unto God, and dieth no more. 

It remains that we turn our thoughts to those imme- 
diate offices of the Spirit towards our own personal 
experience, which serve to bring the doctrine practically 
home to the religious affections and life. 

Do we feel a consciousness of mortal weakness, which 
quite disables us from originating, out of our own virtue, 
the regeneration of the soul, and cleansing the heart from 
all the defilements of sin ? The Holy Spirit comes to 
meet that very incapacity : freely, without money or 
price, the offered and waiting bounty of God's infinite 
affection comes, only asking that we accept it. So it 
came, with a mighty wind and tongues of fire, at Pente- 
cost ; so it will come, with reviving breath and burning 
zeal, to every heart in us that will believe. "What said 
Jesus of the new birth to Nicodemus, but that every 
man so renewed is " born of the Spirit " ? and Paul, but 
that " the washing of regeneration " is " the renewing of 
the Holy Ghost, which God sheds on us abundantly 
through Jesus Christ our Saviour " ? 

Are we overtaken with a solitary sense sometimes of 
our need of guidance through this tangled labyrinth of 
life and its temptations ? The strong voice of an Apos- 
tle answers to that need : "As many as will be led by 
the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." Or does 
your mind stand, dark and perplexed, when some fiend- 
ish enemy from within or without — a sneer, a passion, 
a provocation — bewilders your judgment and agitates 
your temper ? Behold, says your Lord, " the Holy 
Spirit shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought 
to say." With him who could fight with wild beasts at 
Ephesus, and sing anthems in prisons, and terrify pom- 



DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT. 



285 



pous magistrates with his inbred dignity, we can " speak, 
not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but 
which the Holy Ghost teacheth." And so we find the 
Spirit not only a guide, but an instructor ; not only lead- 
ing us to the truth, but educating us to receive it. 

"When you want encouragement under failure, or 
peace in bereavement, he is your " Comforter " ; which 
is the very signification of " Paraclete " ; and in the 
same breath where he promised that guide and teacher, 
Christ promised " peace " also, — his own peace, given 
"not as the world giveth." And if you inquire how 
this comforting comes, Scripture is ready with a reply : 
" Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts 
by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us." 

And then, when the mood makes transition from peni- 
tence, despondency, or grief, to courage, and your neces- 
sity is that you be restrained rather than pardoned, stim- 
ulated, or soothed, you are taught that the same Spirit 
exercises a power of forbidding, as well as of impelling, 
and are reminded that even a purpose which seemed so 
right as preaching the Gospel in Asia was forbidden to an 
Apostle by the Holy Ghost, because the Heavenly Wis- 
dom foresaw results hidden from the best man's eyes. 

And, finally, that highest and crowning grace of Chris- 
tian character, sanctification, is declared, in the Epistle 
to the Romans, to be the work of the Spirit, — Renewer, 
Guide, Comforter, Restrainer, Sanctifier ! Witness the 
beneficent and celestial offices which we either reject 
with worldly unbelief, or entertain with devout thanks- 
giving. 

Nor can there be any evasion under the apology that 
there is partiality in the invitation. For we listen to the 
earliest inspiration of the Church, and hear Peter indig- 



286 



DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT. 



nantly questioning, 6£ Can any man forbid water that 
these should not be baptized, which have received the 
Holy Ghost as well as we ? And they of the circum- 
cision were astonished, because that on the Gentiles also 
was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost." I am not 
at liberty to judge of its reality by any outward manifes- 
tations ; for I am uniformly taught to look for that gift 
as a secret messenger to the soul. I turn with veneration 
to the noblest and holiest saints, like Stephen the proto- 
martyr, and the first companions of his unspeakable trib- 
ulation, and find it repeatedly said of them, that the 
richness, and grace, and stability of their manhood was, 
that they were " filled with the Holy Ghost." Nay, I 
must contemplate with a new feeling of solemnity and 
Christian awe my own poor frame, when I read, " Know 
ye not that your body is the temple of the HoJy Spirit ? 
Whosoever defileth the temple of God, him shall God 
destroy ; which temple ye are." 

It becomes us to remember the great law of the gift ; 
that condition with which we must implicitly comply, if 
we would have our souls enlightened and expanded by 
the indwelling Spirit of our Father and our Redeemer. 
Hearken to it, as it is uttered from Divine lips : " Your 
Heavenly Father shall give the Holy Spirit" — to whom? 
To them that seek it not, and prize it not, captives to 
their traffic, bondmen to their ambition, satisfied with 
what they eat and drink, and with the shapes and colors 
wherewithal they shall be clothed ? No ; but " to them 
that ask him." 

May not the Spirit be resisted, and scorned, and in- 
sulted, then, and even fatally and finally forfeited, — 
sorrowfully withdrawing, at last, — yet with interces- 
sions and yearnings of tender pity that cannot be ut- 



DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT. 



287 



tered ? The answer is not ours. It is the warning of 
One greater than you or me : " Grieve not the Holy 
Spirit of God." « Quench not the Spirit." " Whoso- 
ever blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be 
forgiven him." 

And now, what are the fruits of this Spirit in the 
hearts and lives of men ? Will not our own reason, our 
conscience, nay, our very eyesight, as we read the char- 
acters of those we know, make the same answer with 
revelation ? " The fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, 
and righteousness, and truth, — love, joy, peace, — long- 
suffering, gentleness, temperance." " If we live in the 
Spirit, let us also wall?: in the Spirit." Let the doctrine 
find its unanswerable testimonies in the greater purity, 
nobleness, and devotedness of the Christian's life before 
men. 

W^e do greatly want a fresher and deeper doctrine of 
the Holy Spirit. We want it individually, to give vital- 
ity to our professions, and energy to our effort, and sanc- 
tity to our faith, and unconquerable constancy to our 
will. Christendom wants it, to heal the waste places 
of its foreign and its domestic heathenism, to repair the 
desolations of bigotry and formality, to advance the flag- 
ging march of its principles, to animate the languid piety 
of its churches, to invigorate pure and undefiled religion, 
to gather unrepenting but homesick prodigals in, to en- 
large, and build up, and strengthen the enclosures of the 
Saviour's everlasting fold. 

Come, then, thou Holy Spirit, the Eenewer, to re- 
plenish our wasting lamps, and revive thy work, in the 
midst of the years ! Come, Guide and Teacher, to take 
our hands in thine, and pour light on our way and on 
our mind! Come, as the Comforter, to heal bleeding 



288 



DOCTRINE OF THE SPIRIT. 



hearts, and bind up the bruises of uncharitableness, and 
every sorrow ! Come, Restrainer, to keep our feet, and 
all our hidden desires and imaginations, from evil! 
Come, thou Sanctifier, to purify and perfect us, — unto 
the worship of the Father, and obedience to the Son, — 
till we are a true and accepted branch of the immortal 
Vine, — a people patient and believing, and zealous of 
good works ! 



SERMON XX. 



THE SOUL'S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST, AND VICTORY 
BY HIM.* 

WITHOUT ME YE CAN DO NOTHING. — John XV. 5. 

I CAN DO ALL THINGS THROUGH CHRIST WHICH STRENGTHENETH 

me. — Phil. iv. 13. 

In the two members of this double text are affir- 
mations of both the weakness and the power belonging 
to us. " Without me ye can do nothing," from the lips 
of the Redeemer, signifies our complete dependence. 
" I can do all things through Christ strengthening me," 
the exulting claim of an Apostle, exposes the breadth of 
our liberty. And inasmuch as they who can do all 
things ought to do greatly, this sinless boast of Paul 
challenges us with a grand ideal. It utters a stimulat- 
ing call to our spiritual energies. 

In this twofold bearing, the text is only true to the 
profound facts of our nature and our position. We are 
— experience and analysis equally confirm it — we are 
both weak and strong, both dependent and free. Our pro- 
bation is balanced between these conflicting conditions. 



* Preached before the " Autumnal Convention " at Worcester, Mass., 
October 20, 1853. 

25 



290 THE SOUL'S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST. 

There precisely is the problem we are to work out, and 
there is the sharp strain of our discipline. God knew 
that just these conditions were the most fruitful for pro- 
ducing moral maturity. Looking at our duty from one 
side, it would seem as if all we have to do is to put forth 
our moral energies, — to act. Looking at it from another 
side, it would seem as if our chief business is to appre- 
ciate what Christ does for us, — to realize that we belong 
to him. To learn how to adjust these elements, — how 
to combine and manage both our large birthright of free- 
will and its humbling limitations, — how to use our 
ability nobly, and at the same time to draw the grace of 
submission out of our insignificance, not suffering the 
one to engender impiety, nor the other to dishearten us 
into indolence, — this is perhaps the choicest secret in 
religious wisdom. We have to discover that our frailty 
is in fact a minister to our progress, in first making us 
feel that we can do nothing of ourselves, and afterwards 
drawing us to Him in whom the soul gains its perfec- 
tion ; and, on the other hand, that our native capacity is 
the spur that keeps our muscles from palsy. Our de- 
pendence is the needed check on vanity ; and our power 
puts us to work in the Master's vineyard, after we have 
entered it under that lowly door of self-renunciation. 

Let me say, that, in my present treatment, I recognize 
no distinction between the Messiah speaking and the 
God who speaks by his lips. " The Father who dwell- 
eth in me," he says, " he doeth the works." " As the 
Father hath given me commandment, even so I speak." 
Raising no question, therefore, of the interior relations 
of their nature, nor touching the dogmatic aspect of the 
case in any way, I find that, for all the practical inter- 
ests of the subject, what is declared by Christ of himself 



THE SOUL'S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST. 



291 



is declared of God. Understand me, then, as taking for 
granted this oneness between them, by which each 
speaks for the other, and as waiving from the discussion 
any possible notion of a conflict of their dignities. 

My method will be, first, to offer you some illustra- 
tions of the beautiful law, inwoven into our spiritual con- 
stitution, that it is looking upward to a Power above us 
which works the largest effects in both animating and 
purifying the soul, rather than any introspection, peeping 
about for ever among our own petty attainments or de- 
fects ; then, to observe how this essential want is met in 
Christ Jesus, and how he becomes the elevating Presence 
and informing Power which lends to every true life its 
order, its constancy, its peace. 

Undoubtedly, the chief and most urgent sense of our 
need of Divine help comes by the conviction of our sins. 
Dependent for all inspiration and furtherance on the 
Father's Well-Beloved, we depend on him most of all 
for the reconciliation that brings forgiveness, and so 
we feel this dependence most completely, when smitten 
by the conscious ness of our alienation. The perfect 
but violated law, with no lax nor exceptional clause ; 
the bright immaculate standard ; the unqualified " Thou 
shaft " from the mouth of the Judge, insulted by our 
constant transgression ; the faithful and rebuking mem- 
ory that will not sleep, but fixes on us the guilt and the 
dread of offenders ; — these are what wring from the de- 
pendent breast the heartiest cry, u Lord, save us, or we 
perish ! " 

Apart from this, however, and in a more general view, 
it is by one of the most signal spiritual laws that human 
hearts are made to receive their chief impulses from 
a being exalted over them ; as child from parent, — 



292 THE SOUL'S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST. 



scholar from teacher, — the soldier from his leader, — the 
citizen from the majesty of government embodied in 
the ruler. So in the Church, which is the nursery, the 
school, the camp, the kingdom, of religious training and 
growth. There is no principle so wondrously efficient 
for the production of holiness as faith in that eternal 
play of the Spirit into our common life, promised by 
Jesus, as the perpetuation of his own mediatorial office, 
under the names of Comforter, Paraclete, Holy Spirit, 
Spirit of Truth. When our lives lose this transfiguring 
faith, the celestial splendor has faded from them. It is 
this that establishes that affecting commerce between 
humanity and the heavens, which brings down the help 
of the Almighty to renew, from hour to hour, our wast- 
ing devotions. This is that doctrine of the Spirit, — 
wakening, encouraging, sanctifying, — which the mod- 
ern Church seems often so stupidly bent on denying, as 
if it would bereave the earth of its only celestial light. 
And it is indispensable to the doctrine, as a faithful 
study of John's Gospel will interpret it to us, that we 
understand by the Spirit something more, something 
nearer, something warmer and more efficacious, than the 
inarticulate influences of nature ; namely, that peculiar 
and personal energy which Christ referred to as in fact 
the continuation of his own life in his Church, and 
declared to be inaugurated on his going away, and 
which is clearly separated from the domain of natural 
law. The Saviour uttered no syllables more full of ten- 
derness, than when he besought his followers to feel that 
without him they could do nothing. He furnished man 
no uplifting nor propelling impulse so august or so be- 
nignant as when he cried, " No man cometh unto the 
Father but by me." Study deeply enough, and we shall 



THE SOUL'S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST. 293 

see that God nowhere gives such final honor, or such' 
immortal blessing, to the names of his separate sons and 
daughters, as when he exalts his Only-begotten over 
them all, and gives him a name that is above every 
name, that so their faith might look up to him, and 
climb after him. 

I think you will agree with me, that there is somo 
secret provision in our nature which makes this act of 
looking upward the grandest exercise of our faculties. It 
is shadowed forth by the fact, that, in the common con- 
sent of all languages, what is noblest and best is placed 
over us. Heaven is arched above our heads. Excellence 
is a height. When we improve, we ascend. Greatness 
is figured as an elevation. Virtues in character are meas- 
ured according to their loftiness. The divinest motions 
of the human spirit are aspiration and veneration, — 
both looking upward. Prayer, we say, goes up. The 
more a man sees above him to reverence, the humbler 
he is ; and " he that humbleth himself is in due time ex- 
alted." The finest symbols of all generous attainment- 
are mountains and the sky. And just as to a true and 
thoughtful mind the largest satisfaction found in the 
society of great hills is in looking up toward them from 
beneath, and letting the kindled and devout imagination 
travel up their glorious peaks into the infinitude and 
mystery whither the summits point, rather than in put- 
ting the foot on then: crown and sending the eye arro- 
gantly down into the conquered plains, — so always, if 
our spiritual state is right, what is grandest on earth 
most impels us to look beyond it. 

This conviction of a constant dependence on what 
God does for us, by his Spirit and his Son, as the great 
spring and motive of what we are to do for ourselves, 

25* 



294 



THE SOUL'S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST. 



stands in intimate connection with other dispositions, 
besides humility, equally necessary to the higher types 
of character, — such as self-denial, gratitude, penitence, 
love, — all heroic traits. Is not self-denial a part of mag- 
nanimity ? But strike away its divine impersonation 
in Him who died that we might live, and, if we could no 
longer gaze up to that standard of sacrifice, how soon 
would the glory of such virtue grow dim ! Penitence is 
the sorrow that haunts a guilty breast for having rejected 
that condescension, and so it is the child of Christianity. 
Gratitude is the answer of nature to the Being who so 
lent himself to the world's malice, and to the forgiveness 
that blesses penitence with pardon. And if you speak 
of love, — was there ever a feeling worthy to be called 
by that holy name that did not see in the person beloved 
something superior to self? By all these bonds of better 
feeling does Christ fasten us to the way of life, when he 
makes us realize that without him we can do nothing. 
The idea that man is the originator and autocrat of 
his religious life, by severing us from our Head, robs 
us of these radiant graces. Submission to self is no 
submission. A hard, bold, conceited, and finally a dis- 
appointed and recanting temper, is engendered, and be- 
cause the soul would not lean on its Lord, piety perishes. 

It may be pretended, I know, that this doctrine of de- 
pendence on what is done for them may indispose men 
to act for themselves, and, by locating the main work 
above them, turn redemption into a temptation to idle- 
ness, leaving Christian believers only passive recipients 
of salvation, instead of energetic doers, working it out. 
But whatever color of plausibility such an objection may 
have taken from extravagant or one-sided representations, 
the view, as it opens from the New Testament, offers no 



THE SOUL'S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST. 



295 



practical room for the charge, and the best philosophy 
takes sides with Revelation. Let any heart really feel 
that a great sacrifice of love has been undergone for it, 
and mast it not, by a mighty necessity, give back the 
service of love in return? To maintain the opposite is 
the worst libel human nature has ever suffered yet. On 
the contrary, it presents human nature on its more attrac- 
tive side, I think, that it is found to be striving for gener- 
ous achievements quite as effectually out of the grateful 
sense of what has been done for it, as out of the more 
ambitious and Pharisaic hope to do everything for itself. 
There is no nobler order of souls than those that know 
how to owe their best wealth to a Hand above them, 
without servility or sloth. The secret of beautiful man- 
ners, in society, is social reverence, or that tacit subordina- 
tion of selfish convenience to the whole, which is like a 
perpetual offer of free and dignified service to others. The 
most refined of all courtesy is that by which a man makes 
the most of himself, only for the sake of making, in him- 
self, the worthiest offering to his kind. Hence the ancient 
loyalty was often self-ennobling simply because it was 
unselfish. Christianity, transferring the homage from 
all accidental principalities to a Prince of perfection and 
peace, sustains the principle with a better application. 
It is clearly declared, in the spiritual code of the Gospel, 
M Whosoever is willing to give his life away for his Mas- 
ter, shall save it." 

It is not a mere conceit of speculation, I think, to seek, 
in this way, a confirmation for the Christian doctrine 
of dependence, in the natural facts and constitution of 
the mind, — in the rule of manners and in every-day 
emotions. For, however complete our deference to the 
authority of Revelation, there are capricious moods in 



296 THE SOUL'S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST. 



the most believing minds, when intellectual curiosity will 
be prying into the realm of ordinary reason for some 
echoes to the vast witness in the Bible. In such furtive 
licenses of doubt, it is no light comfort to faith to find 
that even all along the highways of nature, in the public 
paths of custom and of reflection, there are scattered con- 
senting monuments to the insufficiency of our mortal 
ability, to the power of the Divine redemption. 

Accordingly, it is interesting to see that the history of 
the higher speculations in philosophy scarcely shows a 
period when the idea of man's belonging to a Superior 
was not embraced by some of the leaders of thought. 
Ever since the morning of science, the foremost danger of 
intellectual activity has been audacity, or that self-confi- 
dent unbelief which thinks to dispense with God; this 
danger the instincts of the deeper-sighted thinkers have 
not failed to apprehend. Standing in the Grecian twi- 
light, hear Plutarch, as he looked still farther back into 
what was antiquity to him, bewailing the departure of 
an earlier faith. " The ancients," he says, " directed their 
attention simply to the divine in phenomena, as God is 
the centre and beginning of all, and from him all things 
proceed. But the moderns turned themselves wholly 
away from that ground of things, and supposed every- 
thing could be explained from natural causes," — the 
identical presumption of our nineteenth century scepti- 
cism. The great modern master of that philosophy 
which affects to be most independent of Revelation in- 
troduces into his system a principle which, if you only 
allow it to play into personal as well as abstract relations, 
does really suspend everything on God's will ; namely, 
that in all human minds the sense of an Infinite is the 
necessary condition and counterpart of a finite conscious- 



THE SOUL'S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST. 



297 



ness. And while European culture in its last and most 
subtile elaboration thus leaves in its splendid edifice a vir- 
tual confession of the fundamental axiom of religion, we 
find the solitary thinker of the Western Continent, Jona- 
than Edwards, in his Berkshire study, by reasonings not 
less original and independent, nor less influential on the 
world's ideas, maintaining the much plainer and more 
evangelical proposition, that the whole universe, in every 
part of it, is supported by a continual succession of acts of 
the Divine Will, not different from that which at first cre- 
ated the world, "just as an image is upheld in a mirror 
by a continual flow of rays of light, each succeeding pen- 
cil of which does not differ from that by which the image 
was at first produced." So do the extremes of human 
theories, in the diverse voices of genius, through all the 
periods of which letters inform us, unite in rendering their 
testimonials — from the most vague and reluctant, to the 
most articulate, cordial, and clear — to the simple truth 
which Paul put better than any of them, — that in God 
we live and move and have our being. And without 
him as he is manifest in his Christ, spiritually we can do 
nothing. 

You will hardly need an argument, I think, my friends, 
to satisfy you that the active forces of our time are work- 
ing in a direction that is very liable to drift men's thoughts 
and affections away from this humble upward-looking 
faith and religious submission. The very enterprise that 
builds +he gorgeous structure of our civilization, threat- 
ens to undermine the vastly more needful shelter of the 
Church ; because, by so many triumphs over the resist- 
ance of matter, the brain grows self-assured, and comes 
to deem itself almighty and all-sufficient. As we go on 
making the earth more convenient, there is less feeling of 



298 



THE SOUL ? S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST. 



the need of that other heritage, lying all glorious and 
serene beyond it. Ships, factories, railways, mills, aque- 
ducts, instead of being made the consecrated instruments 
of a holier society, may be only the boasted badges of a 
richer one, and beget a shallow and ungodly impudence. 
In the piety now fashionable, we miss, how often! the 
simple, childlike character that waits every hour for the 
beckoning hand of God. At church even, the preaching 
encroaches upon the prayers, and wins the livelier in- 
terest. At our business, the swift eagerness of motion 
puts life at awful hazards ; the great channels of public 
travel planting and peopling graveyards at every bend of 
the road. All is persistent will, valiant energy, pushing 
and victorious worldliness. How little of meek, persist- 
ent communion with the everlasting Lord ! How little 
dependence on the Spirit! How little of that deeper 
meditation which sees that, without religion, all this fret- 
ting action will be but a noisy ruin after all, and that 
without Christ it can do nothing! We are impatient 
for results. We measure the spiritual life by the wealth 
or size of parishes and the ostentation of philanthropy. 
We are willing to pay liberal prices for that piety which 
yields a handsome return of self-complacency. No sooner 
does some sect get a little faith, than, instead of modestly 
crying, "Lord, I believe: help thou mine unbelief!" it 
goes about to challenge admiration, and expects ap- 
plause, and sets up a competition with its neighbors, — 
too sure evidence that what it got was not faith. The 
old Puritan habit of connecting every change in place or 
venture in business with God's providence, and hallowing 
it by a prayer, is praised perhaps in the eloquence of 
Pilgrim anniversaries ; but is it practised in State Street 
and the State-House? Commerce crowds upon the 



THE SOUL 9 S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST. 



299 



closet. The school-house gets jealous and impatient of 
the Bible. Universities talk of closing their chapels. An 
upstart learning, idolizing knowledge, but only half wise, 
screams its smart sneers at the Revelation which will be 
true after it is dead, as it was before it was born. The 
sin of the brain has always been audacity. And the 
hardest and least relenting of all unbeliefs is that of a bit- 
ter intellectual pride. In the Hebrew allegory, the fallen 
angels of Love regained the celestial light, because they 
confessed their weakness, and crept back, through the 
dark, dependency begging to find again what they had 
lost. But the fallen angels of Knowledge, confident in 
their vain boast of self-emanating lustre, plunged obsti- 
nately on, till they sunk, obscure and lost for ever, into 
the pit. " Without me," — it needs to be written out 
over all your warehouses, and wharves, and banks, and 
barns, and starting-points of travel, and ships' decks, and 
places of amusement, — it needs to be brought into the 
souls, and so into the labor and life, of the people, — 
" Without me ye can do nothing, — without the princi- 
ples of my religion, — without the purity and justice and 
charity of the beatitudes, — without faith in my person, 
— without the spirit of my life, and the sacrifice of my 
cross ! " 

Believe it, brethren, man needs a more generous mo- 
tive than his own promotion. To be satisfying, or serene, 
or strong, his life must link itself through a mediator to 
God, and breathe by his inspiration. When I can begin 
every day, or undertaking, with the feeling, " I do it not 
of myself, so much as the Spirit through me," then I labor 
with more than my poor mortal ingenuity ; the cunning 
of my fingers is the simple desire to be about my Father's 
business ; and I can do all things through Christ strength- 



300 



THE SOUL'S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST. 



ening me. Consciously, distinctly, resolutely, habitually, 
we need to give ourselves, our business, our interests, our 
families, our affections, into the Spirit's hands, to lead and 
fashion us as he will. When we work with the current 
of that Divine "Will, all is vital, efficient, fruitful; for, lean- 
ing back against the Omnipotent arm, this human frame 
attracts strength into all its sinews. But when we strive 
against that current, some secret flaw vitiates even what 
we call our successes ; and how do we know but our 
proudest successes then are only failures in disguise ? 
You have seen the rower's strength put vigorously against 
the tide ; and, judging from his own narrow point on the 
water, the dash of his oars seemed to be dividing the waves, 
and sending him up the channel. But when the mist 
lifts, let him send his glance away to some stable land- 
mark on the shore, and he finds the triumphant stream has 
all the time been drifting him backward and downward. 
So with the moral issue of our plans. By our conceited 
standards, we seem to compass our ends; but transfer 
the scale of measurement to eternity, and behold! we 
have been losers of the soul while we gained the world, 
because the Spirit was not invited to befriend our toil ! 
After the bolts are all driven, and the shrouds are set, we 
must still wait for the breath of heaven to nil the sail. 
Nothing, literally nothing, in the final reckoning, without 
our Lord! 

An illustration, how we never comprehend the facts 
of experience in their Christian meaning, nor look on 
our duties rightly, till we project the centre of our inter- 
est and love out of ourselves, and fix it in God, may be 
found in the progress of astronomy. The little planet we 
-stand on was once reckoned the centre of the material 
universe. But when Copernicus supplanted Ptolemy, 



THE SOUL'S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST. 301 

the earth, retiring into the humility of a satellite, waited 
on the silent lordship of the sun. So in the false com- 
putations of a short-sighted worldliness, self is central; 
self-will is sovereign ; man is deified. But when Chris- 
tianity brings in her grander " calculus of faith," the su- 
premacy is removed from man to God ; the moral uni- 
verse is no longer anarchical, but heliocentric again ; the 
earth depends from the heaven over it. The true order 
of piety, worship, life, is restored, because all the events 
of life gravitate about the Eternal Providence ; the heart 
obeys a heavenly control ; the affections are swayed by 
the attractions of the Spirit. Without our Lord we can 
do nothing. 

Turn, now, to the wonderful way whereby all these 
necessities and cravings of the soul for help from beyond 
and above itself are met in Jesus of Nazareth. Ponder 
it, and you will exclaim, with Paul, 66 1 can do all things 
through Christ strengthening me." By his wide and 
mighty heart, he strengthens you, embracing all the pos- 
sibilities of experience, and covering all the moral emer- 
gencies of life ; reaching up to heaven, in the exaltation 
of his nature, and having his home in the bosom of God, 
but stooping down to the earth also in his mercy, writing 
on its sand, kneeling on its sod, breathing its air, touch- 
ing its saddest trials with his miracles. Tender enough 
to soothe the sorrow of the gentlest child by his pity, he 
is regal enough in his power to command into his service 
twelve legions of angels. Praying to his Father, he lends 
the ardor and steadfastness of his fidelity to our dull, ir- 
regular affections. Lifting special petitions when he had 
special wonders to work, or special agonies to bear, he 
brightens every midnight of our perplexity by his mid- 
night supplications in the mountain, aids our hesitations 

26 



302 THE SOUL'S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST. 



by his cry at the grave of Lazarus, supports our faith by 
his thrice-repeated entreaties in the garden. When re- 
viled, reviling not again, and forgiving his murderers, he 
furnishes a heavenly peace to every one in your houses 
that is wronged or betrayed, — the child that is feeling 
the first pang of faithless friendship, the merchant de- 
frauded by his partner, the woman defamed by her rival. 
Thus, tempted himself like as we are, he is able to suc- 
cor them that are tempted. 

By every incident in his earthly history, every office in 
his ministry of humiliation, he strengthens us. So mar- 
vellously did virtue go out of him, the spots where his 
feet lingered but a moment became shrines of homage, 
where all centuries and nations kneel, — Galilee, Naz- 
areth, Bethlehem, the Well of Samaria, the Mount of 
Olives : what strengthening names ! The bed of every 
new-born babe in Christendom is safer, because his was 
made in a manger. All the shores of countries on to 
which Christian discovery has leaped, are more sacred for 
his walking the beach of Tiberias. His reading in the 
synagogue at Capernaum has added a holier dedication 
to every sanctuary and pulpit. When he paid the tithe 
of his people, he sanctioned every righteous claim of the 
civil government on the citizen. And when he sat 
down with the affectionate circle at the home in Beth- 
any, the kind securities of family and kindred received a 
more than mortal benediction. So was every step in his 
Judaean journey radiant with the eternal Light, lightening 
thenceforth every man born into a Christian world, and 
strengthening him. 

By the benevolence and the power of his miracles, he 
strengthens us. Not only by breaking the monotony of 
nature, and attesting with supernatural proofs that the 



THE SOUL'S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST. 303 



Almighty must be with him, but also by the lasting les- 
sons of compassion and consolation which those miracles 
have left for us. We see the Saviour standing once with 
his gracious hand on the dead girl's heart ; and lo ! that 
image multiplies itself in a thousand weeping homes, 
through all the dying race. Once he spoke the word of 
resurrection to Lazarus; and the voice echoes and re- 
echoes in endless reverberations from all the walls of 
Christian sepulchres and graves that will ever be hollowed 
out on the globe. He healed a few sick ; and all sickness 
and pain are more endurable. He hushed the storms at 
sea ; and every sailor knows more surely that the waves 
are curbed by a heavenly control. He opened the ears 
of the deaf ; and all his disciples listen more gratefully to 
his instruction. 

For, again, by his true teachings he strengthens us. 
The Sermon on the Mount kindles virtue to-day, as glo- 
riously as when its unequalled sentences fell on the mul- 
titude at his feet. When crime seems to be grinning in 
horrid triumphs over innocence, when vice grows riotous, 
or mammon cruel, in our New England cities, we turn 
back to the beatitudes, to the parables, to the conversa- 
tion with Nicodemus, declaring that, except a man be 
born again, he cannot see God's kingdom; to the rebuke 
of those ambitious politicians, the sons of Zebedee, seek- 
ing high offices in the new administration ; to the stern 
rebuke that bade the prosperous young worldling go sell 
all he had and give to the poor, and so crush by violence 
the idolatry in the heart ; and in these rare discourses, 
reaching down, plain, piercing, and practical, to us, as to 
the publicans and statesmen and mechanics of eighteen 
hundred years ago, we feel that every word from the Sav- 
iour's lips is bread of life, coming down from heaven, 
strengthening us. 



304 THE SOUL'S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST. 

By his cross and death, above all, he strengthens us, 
— strengthens us to fight afresh with the sin that he there 
vanquished, to buffet the temptations that he there con- 
quered, to hope for the forgiveness which he there pledged 
and sealed. No soul among you that has ever known 
what remorse is, — a convicted conscience, — a yearning 
for reconciliation with a broken commandment and a 
forsaken Father, — needs to be told how the cross strength- 
ens. There are passages in human experience when all 
else is weakness, and confidence rises over no other spot 
in the dark field of sight but Calvary. 

By his surviving spirit, too, — by what he still is to the 
world, — he strengthens us. Dispensing secret gifts to his 
true followers, as the living and present Head over all 
things to his Church, he remains the divine friend that 
opens his heart to the simple communion of the humblest 
believer. Ages do not outgrow him. Libraries cannot 
supplant him. All our science casts no ray that dims his 
transcendent glory; for the solar beam never pales before 
a torch. He is with us, if we seek him, as much as with 
Peter, and John, and Mary, and Thomas. " Lo, I am 
with you alway, even unto the end of the world." 

And just here we discover light on the ecclesiastical 
difficulty that has so long vexed theology, namely, how 
to attain unity in the Church. You are met here to- 
night, a company of Christian students, with breasts full 
of aspiration for that grand consummation of history, — 
one fold and one Shepherd. How else shall the body 
be one, my brethren, except by abiding in its Head, its 
heart, its life, and beholding his presence? How else 
shall disciples see eye to eye, but by all ranging them- 
selves in the divine circle of affectionate reverence about 
the central Master, sitting at his feet, and looking into 



THE SOUL'S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST. 305 

his countenance, and doing his works ? Christ did more 
than stand apart, and lay the corner-stone of the Church 
with his hand, and then retire into distant heavens. He 
pours his own heart's life, which is the Spirit, into it 
daily. Realize this, and you will no longer have to com- 
plain of churches that are not vital, or churches that 
hate and devour each other. Communion will be a fact. 
Society will be beautiful. Justice and love will crown 
commerce and government. 

By his intercessions as advocate before the throne, 
seconding our prayers, and prevailing with the Father, 
he strengthens our devotion as greatly as his doctrine 
strengthens our work. Still, as we hearken, in the midst 
of our secret supplication we hear him saying, u With- 
out me ye can do nothing," and, " Whatsoever ye shall 
ask the Father in my name, I will give it you." 

And finally, by his resurrection, bringing immortality 
to light, he strengthens us, — strengthens us just where 
faith was feeblest and most likely to fail, — among the 
fears and sorrows of death. As fast as experience deep- 
ens with you, friends, it will sway the soul, if you do not 
unbelievingly resist it, more and more to the only Inter- 
preter of its mystery, the only Deliverer from its bondage. 
Processions that halt each moment at opening ceme- 
teries ; tears that are falling, falling for ever, and baptiz- 
ing burial acres ; the wails of grief that moan through 
desolated households, — they all articulate, in some under- 
tone, the old cry of Peter, so tender, so grateful : " Lord, 
to whom shall we go ? Thou alone hast the words that 
comfort mourners, open tombs, and give us back our 
dead, — even words of everlasting life." And then, is 
there any heart beating here this evening which has not 
its own secret accusation, or strife, or fear, — its hidden 

26* 



306 THE SOUL'S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST. 

cross of fire clinging to the inmost sensitive cords of life, — 
not to be outrun by travel, not to be dispelled by gayety, 
not to be drugged by anodynes, nor outwitted by philos- 
ophy, nor rejected by any restless artifice of fashion,— 
shown to no mortal eyes, but only whispered in the peti- 
tions that besiege the mercy of Heaven ? It is as if God 
kept our secret soul opening in, on one of its many sides, 
only towards that one Friend that is closer than brother, 
or wife, or lover, — a perpetual memorial that without 
him we can do nothing ! 

As I bring this meditation towards an end, let me ask 
you to advert to two of the most common usurpers that 
we irreligiously thrust in to displace the Redeemer as the 
source of spiritual power, — denying his own word, that 
without him we can do nothing. I mean, first, material 
nature, with its laws of order and its aspect of beauty ; 
and secondly, self, — self as independent of a Master. 

Of the first, it will be generally agreed, I suppose, that 
the places where the grandeur of the visible creation is 
most magnificently shaped to the eye are high mountains. 
Our fatal mistake is in presuming they have, or could 
have, any really efficacious influence on character, whether 
by way of incitement to holiness or restraint from sin, — 
anything in fact beyond a certain vague, aesthetic, and 
transient stimulus of the finer sentiments, apart from that 
faith in Christ and his religion, with the hallowing asso- 
ciations that surround them, which we carry, or may not 
carry, with us to their impressive, august ritual. When 
I have stood on the loftiest peak of our Northern ridge, 
and looked off* alone on the vast billows of rock and for- 
est that stretched like a stiffened sea below, or up into 
the sky, which seemed no nearer, but more immeasurable 
there, I confess one of my first involuntary recollections 



THE SOUL'S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST. 



307 



went away from the sublime scene about me to the tides 
of human life rolling far off their dark elements of re- 
morse for sin, of pain, and grief, and penitence, and 
hopeless love, and sighing of slaves, and baffled aspira- 
tion. They sent no sound up into that cold solitude ; 
but the mortal breast I had brought up with me told me 
they were all living, and chafing, and surging on. And 
so my next thought was of that Christ by whom this 
hardened humanity, waiting so many generations, must 
be redeemed. The upheaved and tangled rifts of rock, 
ploughed only by volcanic revolutions and the wearing 
weather, reminded me how the whole creation groaneth 
together for the manifestation of the sons of God ; the 
broken pillars of the hills became prophets of the second 
coming of the Son of Man ; and from the jagged monu- 
ments of ancient change, Christian hope ran forward to 
" Christ's new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwell- 
eth righteousness." 

Or, finally, will you seek the original fountains of 
goodness in your own breast ? Blind and disappointing 
search ! That is a short sight that can trace any right- 
eous impulse which gleams across your soul only to 
yourself. It has a diviner parentage, and a supernatural 
history. Its birth was in the Spirit of the Most High. 
The gracious influences set playing through Christendom 
by the Holy One of Nazareth have nurtured it. When- 
ever, after years of ignoble and selfish indolence, a sud- 
den conviction of uselessness has smitten your conscience, 
and then a resolve to be a benefactor to some human lot t 
has scattered this dismal suspicion that you might be liv- 
ing to no purpose, brightening and refreshing your whole 
heart, — it was the gift of his Spirit, more than your own 
invention, and the glory should be his. The noble host 



308 THE SOUL'S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST. 

of reformers, that have stood between old abuses and 
their victims, are his army. The conquerors of oppres- 
sion, of crime, of poverty, of superstition, of oceans that 
lay this side of heathenism, have all conquered in the 
name of Him who came to open prison-doors, and set the 
bruised at liberty. The valiant priests of labor have 
been but servants of that great High-Priest, passed into 
the heavens, who sanctified, all lawful industry when 
he said, " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." 
The successful vindicators of sinning outcasts have all 
watched and prayed through Him who came not to call 
the righteous, but sinners, to repentance. And all the 
lengthening train of redeeming charities and philanthro- 
pies lift their accordant anthem to the one Redeemer, " Not 
unto us, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory ! " 

Brethren, we have raised, I know, but a corner of the 
fold which veils the strengthening offices of Jesus to the 
world. With such animating, but all inadequate glimp- 
ses, we must retire from the unexhausted theme. The 
spiritual power in Christ is without limits. We call the 
celestial spaces, where the planets swing, infinite ; but 
not as the quickening life in our Lord is infinite ; for that 
is deeper than the sky, holier than its mystery, brighter 
than its effulgence, more inexhaustible than its variety. 
In the discoveries of astronomy, it is as if one star after 
another, like drops of flame, fell into the field of our vis- 
ion from some supreme and inexhaustible stellar sea, and 
gave themselves into the hand of Science. So, as we 
study, with spiritual eyes, into the Saviour's divinity, one 
after another new points of light, new traits of love, new 
features of blended majesty and tenderness, gleam out 
upon our gratitude. We have only to look to find. 
The heart's matchless telescope is simple, childlike faith. 



THE SOUL'S DEPENDENCE ON CHRIST. 309 



And every spot of common life where Providence plants 
our feet is an observatory, — if we will but stand in it 
looking upward, devoutly upward, — lofty enough for the 
whole sweep of that condescending heaven. 

As we go, and wherever we stand, let us remember, 
that, for truths revealed from above, duties are to be prac- 
tised on earth ; for gifts of the Spirit granted, works of 
the heart and hand are enjoined. "What remains, then, 
but that we go to Him without whom we can do nothing? 
Go with resolute obedience ; go with grateful trust, — 
the inspiring trust that you can do all things through 
Christ strengthening you ! 



SERMON XXI. 

THE HIDDEN LIFE. 

YOUR LIFE IS HID WITH CHRIST IN GOD. — Col. Hi. 3. 

"What gives the doctrine of Christ's mediatorship its 
practical dignity, is not only its unspeakable display of 
Divine mercy in the redemption from sin by the cross, 
but also its wonderful fitness to invigorate and encourage 
a spiritual life in the believer. It is a striking fact of our 
inward economy, and is one of the proofs that we are 
attempered for spiritual uses, that, the loftier the exalta- 
tion we ascribe to the Saviour in his divineness, the more 
intimately always we find him related to the sympathies 
of our humanity. It is they that most elevate him in 
honor, who find him nearest to the affections, and most 
efficient as a helper to familiar duties. This is where a 
superficial criticism, founded on a shallow experience, 
constantly stumbles. When we have received a Re- 
deemer whose being reaches back into the fellowships of 
the Father's bosom and glory, we have also received one 
who abides, with mighty ministries, in the fellowship of 
the Church, and in the disciple's breast, to this day. 
The most reverential view of God manifest in the 
flesh is the largest producer of daily holiness, as well as 
the dearest to the heart. And thus it is proved, as in 



THE HIDDEN LIFE. 



311 



many instances besides, that those truths which most 
rouse a religious veneration are best adapted to inspire 
simple goodness of character ; and what is most pro- 
foundly spiritual is also most directly practical. 

" The life that is hid with Christ in God." This is one 
of those illimitable utterances of the mind of the Spirit, 
which suggest so much to faith through the imagination, 
that we feel as soon as we repeat them how utterly im- 
possible it is to fathom or exhaust their meaning. Deep 
opens below deep. But for the condescending guidance 
of the same Spirit, we might well retire, discouraged and 
dumb, from a theme so august. May the Divine pity for- 
give our errors and lighten our darkness ! 

After the appearance of the Son of God in his per- 
sonal ministry, eighteen centuries and a half ago, in 
Bethlehem, the first fact we encounter, in the historic 
consciousness of the Church, is his invisible supremacy 
as its Head and Lord, not less in the private hearts of dis- 
ciples than in their public organization and missionary 
activity. No sooner was Jesus lifted up from the earth, 
than we find his Apostles, with the widest personal diver- 
sities of habits and tastes, singularly united in that one 
common bond of a hidden life, — hidden as to its spring, 
but open as the day in its generous and beneficent effects. 
Journey where they will, their eyes turn always to one 
transcendent image, ascended, indeed, into the heavens, 
but still giving gifts unto men. Their hearts cling de- 
voutly to one invisible Master. Their lips bear always 
upon them one all-prevailing name. Their prayers are 
all breathed through one intercessor. Their thanksgiv- 
ings and songs of triumph end with one ascription, " To 
Him who died, yea, rather, who is risen again." At every 
step in those fearful perils, — from solitary wildernesses 



312 



THE HIDDEN LIFE. 



where they flew with the standard of the cross, from 
crowded cities and old temples, on the sea in storms at 
midnight, amidst the brilliant enchantments of Corinth, 
in the Athenian Agora, before the judgment-seats of 
tyranny, under the shadows of the Parthenon or of a 
Libyan palm-tree in a sultry noon, with the barbarians 
at Melita, in prisons, in love-feasts, — everywhere, they 
felt their hands to be laid in one sure and mighty hand, 
leading, blessing, delivering, serving them. One Divine 
form walked ever, in brightness, among the " seven gold- 
en candlesticks " whereon they had lighted church fires. 
Descend into the Roman Catacombs that modern curios- 
ity has opened, and there, where they used to hide from 
persecution, and spread the Lord's Supper on the sepul- 
chral tablets of their dead, every inscription, symbol, mon- 
ogram, points to one incorruptible Shepherd. The con- 
stant confession of each of them was, " Of mine own 
self I can do nothing " ; but the great assurance followed 
instantly, " I can do all things through Christ strength- 
ening me." 

And so it has been in the true line of spiritual descent . 
ever since. Personal fellowship with Christ has been the 
hereditary blood in the veins of the Church. Wherever 
genuine piety has burned, there this Apostolic sentiment 
and power, the love of Jesus, has been the animating 
force, — distinct from nature- worship, from moral sci- 
ence, from the religion of prudence, from the culture of 
proprieties. And this inward life, "hid with Christ in 
God," is the life we have now to interpret. I propose to 
ask what it is founded in, what it is in itself, and what 
are the fruits it yields, — or as to its necessity, its nature, 
and its results. 

I. The necessity for sharing the Mediator's life is 



THE HIDDEN LIFE. 



313 



within the soul itself. It is implicated in the essential 
conditions of our spiritual being. We are not obliged to 
search for it in any mystical or strange region of specula- 
tion, but in the most natural and obvious of our feelings. 
The simplest analysis of humanity discovers it, lying ev- 
ident among the elemental facts of life. For the wisest 
philosophy is not more sure to recognize, at last, this 
cry for the Son of God, among the profound and primi- 
tive prophecies of our inward constitution, than the most 
unsophisticated common sense is to confess it, amidst 
the daily discipline of the heart. 

It springs out of both of the two sides of an earnest 
experience in human nature, the consciousness of spirit- 
ual deficiency, and the notion of perfection, — our dis- 
content with what we are, and our desire for what we 
were meant to be. 

We all feel, — at least if our life amounts to anything 
that deserves to be called an experience, — that we are 
not what we ought to be ; that we are terribly otherwise. 
Let us not try to get around the fact. These hearts — 
our own hearts — have taken in other guests than purity 
and honor, devotion and disinterested love. These lips, 
— have they never displaced the honest words of charity 
and prayer for bitterness and mockery ? These hands 
have been about other than the Father's business, — 
those royal services of justice and mercy. Has there 
been no jealousy in our dispositions, or overreaching in 
our dealings, or conceit in our self-esteem, or arrogance 
in our social intercourse, indolence in our habits, extrav- 
agance in our luxuries, slander and equivocation in our 
talk, vanity in the appointments of persons and house- 
holds, intolerance in our judgments, hypocrisy in our pro- 
fessions, — none of the radically impious love of the world 

27 



314 



THE HIDDEN LIFE. 



with which the love of the Father makes no compromise ? 
Now, if we were under the government of abstract laws, 

— as Materialism says we are, and as the Pantheist 
will say, whenever he is both logical and honest, — then 
this sense of deficiency would remain only a moderate, 
intellectual, and inoperative discontent; for it would 
show us to have fallen short only of an ideal standard ; 
it would trouble us only with the negative feeling of hav- 
ing failed of something which we might have achieved, 
and of having abused the possibilities of our capacity ; 
so that we should be but offenders against our own am- 
bition, — not sinners, but only mistaken or undeveloped 
specimens. On the contrary, we are under the govern- 
ment of a God who has both personality and conscious- 
ness, who is the very essence and source of all personal 
consciousness, and whose hourly dealings with us are 
direct and intimate. Our goings astray, the Gospel says, 
are not mistakes, but sins, — not abstractions, but con- 
crete crimes, — not merely dwarfings of our manhood's 
stature, but affronts against an affectionate Father. They 
disturb the harmony and benefit and beauty of a gra- 
cious intercourse between the parent and the child. God 
has spoken ; we have heard. God has commanded ; you 
and I have disobeyed. He commands every day afresh, 

— publishing a new apocalypse of our duty with every 
sunrise. But every day afresh we are selfish, and petu- 
lant, and censorious, and proud, and not quite sincere ; 
our purity is not white ; some duplicity creeps into our 
conversation ; some bodily sacrilege profanes God's tem- 
ple. The law is holy, just, and good. Our lives are not 
holy, nor just, nor good. It is nowhere written that we 
may partly keep that law and partly break it, and yet go 
acquitted. But we break it still. Suppose the past score 



THE HIDDEN LIFE. 



315 



settled by our repentance ; even if the integrity of the 
Divine government were left unimpaired, we have no 
reason to think we shall be perfect men or blameless 
women in the future. We are rather painfully and 
shamefully certain that, after all our endeavors, we shall 
sin again and again. What then were our life, without 
a Mediator reconciling it ? What, if Christ, coming in 
from above its broken strength, did not touch it with his 
inspiration, renew it by his grace, sanctify it by his love ? 
What if he, who alone is competent, uniting both the 
estranged elements in his own redeeming person, did not 
come and take this fallen life, and quicken it by the 
breathing of his spirit, and revive its torpor by his truth, 
and warm its frost in his bosom, and restore its deadness 
by his intercession, — and thus hide it again, with himself, 
in God ? What would it be, except it were thus ani- 
mated by his indwelling power, were forgiven by the 
pardon which no other voice on earth but his ever prom- 
ised, and no other seal but his death could ever accred- 
it ? Past offences are then blotted out. The penitent 
passes into the disciple. Memories of transgression 
torment no more. So that thenceforth, Christ being 
formed within him, the believer might say, " This life 
that I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, 
who gave himself for me." It is a life hid with Christ 
in God. 

On the other side, there is the native notion of perfec- 
tion. That trace of glory past, and pledge of immor- 
tality yet to be, lingers, in most minds, a witness of 
Heaven among so many tokens of shame. The soul 
will not be content with degradation. The prodigal re- 
fuses to eat husks with the swine. The sensualist has 
better moments, when he loathes the companionships, 



316 



THE HIDDEN LIFE. 



and the kennel, of his appetites. The hard idolater of 
money relents, and has a brief vision of something better 
• worth his striving than dividends and profits. The schol- 
ar is kindled by momentary glances of an ambition that 
aspires beyond office or reputation, or any of the praises 
of earthly emulation. Nicodemus dreams of a charac- 
ter saintlier than a Pharisee, and wakes and feels his way 
to Christ by night. Woman is wretched among her or- 
naments and accomplishments and admirations, and feels 
insulted when your compliments imply that these empti- 
nesses are the stateliest honors her heart knows how to 
worship. Even the woman that was vile, in some peni- 
tential moment is irresistibly attracted to the Saviour. 
Tears from the spring that has been so long dry, to wash 
those blessed feet; the hair that a meretricious vanity had 
often braided, more eagerly loosened to wipe them; kisses 
of purified passion ; the ointment, not too costly if it im- 
poverishes her for ever, — what signals of an indestructi- 
ble longing for holiness deep down in the breast of sin ! 
The young man comes to Jesus with that mournful con- 
fession and question, — the pathos of it sadder, I think, 
than anything to be read in any tragedy, — " The heights 
of legal virtue gained, what lack I yet ? " 

Here, again, if there were no personal God to whom 
these aspirations reach up, — if they did not culminate, 
at last, in the supreme desire for harmony with the infi- 
nite and infinitely holy Father, — then we should need no 
personal Mediator. These notions of a more perfect 
state, visions of a spotless virtue, would be only floating 
and transient visitants to the soul, — passing and leaving 
no permanent effect, like the luminous forms that trem- 
ble across the night sky, transfigure the darkness for an 
instant, and vanish. They would not consolidate into 



THE HIDDEN LIFE. 



31? 



principles. They would be only the "haunting oracles 
that stir our clay," which heathen souls knew, and heathen 
genius has celebrated. But the moment our eyes are 
opened on our true relations to God, we see that there is 
no such thing as a satisfactory striving after ideal stand- 
ards, but only after reconciliation with him. We see that 
the restless heart gets peace, the moment it gets the con- 
viction that God is its friend, — or rather, that it and God 
are at one, having one will and one love. Whatever else 
the world can give us, it gives us chaff and the east wind, 
till it gives us that. Perfection of character is not to be 
gained except by that inspiration. A peaceful progress 
in goodness comes only by that faith. And now, again, 
the only way unto the Father is by his Son. For in 
Christ every ideal of spiritual excellence is realized. 
We have no longer to aim at the vague phantom of a 
dream, nor after the cloudy excellence of imagination. 
Christ is before us. Those that place their hands in 
his he leads to the Father. " All mine," he says, " are 
thine, and thine are mine." To be Christ-like is to be 
perfect, — and to have faith in Christ is to be brought 
nigh to God. Here is the spiritual bond which unites 
our loftiest aspirings with Heaven, no less than our 
lowliest self-accusings. In the Mediator our hope as 
well as our penitence is satisfied. We are not only 
restored from what we have been, — we are helped 
forward to what we would be. If our sin finds par- 
don, our love of excellence finds a pattern. Both sides 
of our twofold nature are relieved and blessed. Our 
whole humanity is redeemed. No thought or affection, 
but Christ leads, and trains, and unfolds it. And so oar 
life at its best estate, — whether that be its humiliation 
or its triumph, — whether in the valley of dejection or on 

27* 



318 



THE HIDDEN LIFE. 



the delectable mountains where the city of God beckons 
us, is " hid with Christ in God." 

Here, then, lies the unchangeable necessity of the me- 
diation in Christ, in these two primary and inevitable 
wants of every human heart, — to be restored from sin, 
and to ascend to God, — to obtain forgiveness for the 
past, and to go on unto perfection. In each we should 
be helpless, and could do nothing of ourselves. In both 
we can do all things through Christ strengthening us. 

II. What, then, as the next step, is this life, as to its 
nature ; or in what special kinds of force do its power 
and its peace and its charm consist ? 

First of all in this, — that being received into our faith 
in just these two characters in which we have seen that 
our spiritual exigencies need him, Christ both creates 
within the disciple the freedom that comes of the con- 
sciousness of being forgiven for the past, and directs his 
practical energies to a model that is divine, If you have 
ever known, in some early experience of filial confidence, 
what it is, after going burdened and stifled with the 
sense of alienation from your parent, then to have the 
whole look and feeling of the world simplified and 
brightened by a reconciling explanation, you need no 
other key to the satisfaction of a conscience liberated 
from guilt by confession and forgiveness. That is the 
beginning of all healthful obedience. What was dismal 
compulsion before becomes a spontaneous and free-will 
offering now. Life seems to start from another point, 
to proceed by another principle, to tend to another issue. 
Its spring is gratitude, not law ; its principle is love, 
not fear ; its end is the Divine glory and the good of 
man, not a selfish salvation. And just in proportion to 
the joy of being set free from the frightful phantom of 



THE HIDDEN LIFE. 



319 



the old terror of judgment will be the personal and con- 
fidential intimacy with Him by whom that deliverance 
comes. The life is hid, thankfully and joyously, "in 
God " ; but it is " with Christ " that it is hid. For, ex- 
punge from history the ministry and cross of Jesus, and 
tell me in what other Gospel, in all the literatures of the 
tribes of men, you will look for the glad tidings to peni- 
tence, — " Thy sins are forgiven thee " ? Every ascrip- 
tion of gratitude will be a conscious recognition of what 
Christ has clone, and will interweave the believer's life 
more closely with his. 

But again, the spiritual life depends on Christ in that 
he becomes a Divine Pattern for the energies that form 
character. At every stage of growth, under all the 
phases of conflict, in the development of each proportion 
and feature, the soul finds an original in the spiritual 
symmetry of its tempted, suffering, sinless Lord. But 
this doctrine of Jesus as our example seems to me to 
lose its grandest inspiration, when we contemplate him 
as standing apart from his followers, raised on the pedes- 
tal of mere historic honors, a being of a distant age, and 
thus maintaining towards them only the cold and mechan- 
ical relation of a model to the artist. "We need to bring 
him into the sphere of our personal contact and sym- 
pathy. The example is not a statue outside of us, but 
a vital force working within us. To have our life hid 
with him, we must, in the Apostle's significant language, 
have u Christ formed within us." And when we look to 
him for a pattern, it must not be the Christ of Judaea 
and of Caesar's time, so much as the Christ of our own 
indwelling humanity and of to-day, — not the Hebrew 
Messiah, but the ever-living Immanuel. Paul had that 
fellowship so palpably, that he said, " It is not I that live, 
but Christ that liveth in me.'' 



320 



THE HIDDEN LIFE. 



So it is that, in order to have our inward life in the 
profoundest sense hid with him, we must become con- 
scious of some present and personal relations to him. 
I do not speak of a mystical or visionary fellowship. 
Like other spiritual attainments, this conviction, that the 
Saviour who died for your soul must still know its weak- 
ness, and visit it in its danger, and comfort it in its sor- 
row, and chasten it in its wilfulness, must be made 
strong by exercise. It will be a palpable and refreshing 
reality only to those who have cultivated it, and prayed 
for it: in different degrees distinct, according to the 
measure of the desire, and possible at all only to those 
who have got so far clear of the tyranny of the sens- 
uous understanding, as to give free play to the faith, 
that things which are impossible to men are possible 
with God. Let that beautiful confidence once secure 
a lodgement, however frail, in the soul, and it opens 
into ever-enlarging and cheering demonstrations ; the 
Christian conflict becomes a more animating struggle 
under the eye of that heavenly Leader ; he that mediated 
for Peter and John mediates, not by a presumptuous 
metaphor, but literally and veritably, for me ; " Lo, I am 
with you alway," becomes a universal promise to the 
Church ; the bread and cup are more than memorials of 
an absent Saviour, — they are the symbols of a friend- 
ship abiding and inseparable. Whatever accommodated 
meanings our hard and rationalizing interpretations may 
put into the apostolic language now that it is written, 
— would Paul and his companions have ever said any- 
thing to us, think you, of such transcendent realities as 
the "life that is hid with Christ in God," if they had 
imagined Christ to be a departed benefactor, whom the 
Church was to know only through its memory ? Nay, 



THE HIDDEN LIFE. 



321 



neither the imagination nor the memory was a faculty 
they had any use for, in expounding the doctrine of 
Jesus. They kneiv in whom they believed, and they 
knew that He was with them always. 

Again, " the life that is hid with Christ in God " is a 
life that is perpetually reinvigorated from a conviction 
that Christ imparts to the soul what is more than his 
teachings, and more than his example, — even the direct 
quickening of his inward spirit. It is as if God had said: 
" This world of mankind has gone infatuated and stupid. 
Its very capacity of spiritual apprehension is stultified. 
Lo, I will breathe into it another breath. I will clothe 
my only-begotten Son in a mortal shape ; by that incar- 
nation, all humanity shall be informed with a new vital- 
ity." And this animating force, reviving the race, is 
received by faith. It is another world we live in since 
that incarnation. A new quality was poured into all the 
channels of human thought and feeling. The paralytic 
frame was touched by a heavenly energy from within, 
and started into a nobler attitude. Nor is the gift lim- 
ited or partial. Wherever any soul leans its affections 
on the breast of Jesus, returning, homesick, from what- 
ever wandering or sorrow, there, as once to the beloved 
disciple, the Master tells his secret, and thenceforth — 
O joy that passeth knowledge ! — the " life is hid with 
Christ in God." 

But furthermore, this doctrine of spiritual union, 
through Christ, with God, affects devotion. He who 
is conscious of that internal fellowship knows it by the 
richer interest, and the intenser relish, given to his pray- 
ers. For it reveals Christ as what the New Testament 
so often represents him, our " advocate with the Father." 
How can he intercede for us, but by a present acquaint- 



322 



THE HIDDEN LIFE. 



ance with our needs ? Praying " in the name of Christ " 
is something more, my friends, than repeating the sylla- 
bles of a proposition at the end of our petitions. No 
form of words like that can wing any supplication in a 
stronger flight heavenwards, nor return us spiritual gifts. 
Praying in the name of Christ must be praying from the 
feeling that he knows the substance of our prayer, that 
he knows the heart it confesses, and that he aids it now 
by his prevailing sympathies, as much as he aided it 
when he stood in Judasa, and taught his followers how 
to say " Our Father." But this will be confidently af- 
firmed by those whose experience has ever ascended 
from the prayer of nature to the prayer through an in- 
terceding Christ, — that the latter gains as immeasura- 
bly on the former, in its claim and its satisfaction, as 
the religion of the New Testament is dearer and more 
consoling than the religion of sunset skies, of cabinets, 
and observatories, and regularities of nature. " Whatso- 
ever ye shall ask in my name, that shall ye receive." If 
you need the Master in the sharp temptations of the 
market-place, the cares of the household, the bewilder- 
ments of business, and the seductions of society, you 
surely cannot bear to part with him in the closet. And 
if you have walked with him, to catch his celestial wis- 
dom, among the ships on the shore of the sea, you will 
not forget how he goes, at nightfall, to the mountain, to 
pray for the world. 

How strikingly it unfolds the plans of the Eternal 
Spirit in our behalf, that even in those relations and du- 
ties which lie most directly between our souls and the 
Father, — duties and relations in which we might there- 
fore seem to be most independent of a mediator, — prac- 
tically even there the highest style of piety is rarely 



THE HIDDEN LIFE. 



323 



found without a lively sense of Christ. That central 
and comforting faith, for instance, that every concern in 
our lives, from those that our fallible estimates pronounce 
the most momentous to the most minute, are directly 
contrived for us by an interested and sympathizing God, 
whose hand is for ever shaping and guiding and bending 
every little force and event in our discipline towards a 
definite and special end, — a faith which embosoms us 
in a care so immediate and so fatherly, that we almost 
want some warmer word than Providence to express it, 
— that is not found, in its most radiant and effective ex- 
ercise, I think, except in hearts that are most alive with 
the personal love for Christ. Our life seems never, in any 
way, to be really hid in God, except with and through 
his Son, — and because that is the divinely ordered way. 

III. What, then, is this life as to its results ? I an- 
swer, first of all, it is the life of love. If it is hid " with 
Christ,'' it is penetrated with the spirit of Him who loved 
as man never loved. If it is hid u in God," it is suffused 
by the affections of Him whose name is Love. No man 
hating his brother can abide in that fellowship, — no un- 
merciful despiser of the poor, — no bigot, whether in 
the creed of church, or science, or fashion, — no self- 
avenger, — no cherisher of vindictive passions or ancient 
grudges, — no oppressor, whether on a throne, a plantation, 
in a family, a factory, a parlor, or a shop, — no conceited 
Pharisee, whose dress publishes the pride of rank by 
fabric or by phylactery, whose manners boast perpetually, 
" I am holier than thou." Jesus is charity, — charity 
conscious and living. To live in him is to live merci- 
fully, fraternally, liberally. When the world's inmost 
life is hid with him, its outward life will be humane and 
beautiful. The members of his body will cease to be 



324 



THE HIDDEN LIFE. 



fratricidal. The bloodshed and aggressions of nations, 
the overreachings of commerce, the unequal administra- 
tion of governments, the barbarous contrasts in Christian 
cities, the private hatreds that disfigure households, will 
yield to a constructing and benignant principle of heav- 
enly order. The indwelling affections of a brotherhood 
will break forth into fresh and fairer forms of fellow-ser- 
vice every hour, colonizing the planet with apostles of 
generosity. " I in them, and thou in me, that they 
may be one." The social life of the disciples hid with 
Christ in God ! 

This life, therefore, fast as it is admitted to dominion 
in the soul, solves the old theological contradiction be- 
tween works and faith. For it gets down below the 
roots of that barren quarrel, and shows that all rich and 
noble works must spring out of a faithful heart. No 
true, strong Christian character was ever fashioned by dis- 
connected impulses. There must be an organizing force. 
Christian character is not a mosaic of moralities, nor a 
compilation of merits, nor a succession of acts, nor an ag- 
gregate of amiabilities. It is a growth. And that principle 
of interior vitality out of which it unfolds branches and 
foliage and flowers, is the life of God planted through 
Christ in the soul. We confound the whole philosophy 
of our being, when we think to attain to goodness, which 
is salvation, by beginning on the surface and working 
down. What we have to do is to receive Christ inward- 
ly, and then the fruits of daily righteousness will spring 
forth, as naturally as leaves on a tree or streams from a 
fountain. We cannot keep them back, except we crush 
out and crucify this Christ within. They need no for- 
cing. Believing and doing will not be separate pro- 
cesses, of which you may take one away and leave the 



THE HIDDEN LIFE. 



325 



other. That mistake grew up in the creeds only when 
faith degenerated from this living and spiritual power 
into a dogmatic and ecclesiastical letter. But in what- 
ever heart Christ really dwells by faith, there holiness in 
all forms of manly uprightness, womanly serenity, con- 
scientious citizenship, intellectual sincerity, truthful talk, 
honest trade, beneficent industry, will be the inevitable 
harvest, and the reapers of a nobler civilization shall come 
singing, bringing these sheaves with them. 

Thus the doctrine gives the world truth as well as 
love, — truth, the absolute and immortal treasure that 
the soul of humanity has been searching for from the 
beginning, — truth, the pure and colorless element, that 
is to the mind what light is to the eye, and reveals the 
scenery of the inward world, as the sun shows the head- 
lands and offing and hill-tops of the globe, — truth in all 
its uncompromising rigor and concrete applications; — 
not the conventional veracity of the warehouse and the 
drawing-room, that is satisfied if it equivocates with ly- 
ing labels upon merchandise, and evasions in the bargain, 
and artifices in courts of law, or, in general society, with 
silly falsehoods of flattery, or cowardly falsehoods to 
avoid offence, or malicious falsehoods to breed alienation 
and give jealousy its disgusting triumph; — but an alto- 
gether stricter, holier thing. For if you once suppose 
Jesus to be admitted, in all the purity of his transparent 
soul, as a visible witness among these traffickings and 
assemblies, who would dare to confront with such de- 
ceptions the look of his divine rebuke ? Christ, then, 
hid in the heart, is the test and guardian of truth. 

And of justice, no less ; not that formal honesty which 
is only a moral name for the selfish policy that is just as 
radically unrighteous under one name as another; not 



326 



THE HIDDEN LIFE. 



the legal integrity that has no higher sanction than the 
letter of a statute-book, and so cheats the helpless, or de- 
frauds by indirection, or steals a competitor's reputation ; 
but rather that spiritual justice which treats every human 
heart uprightly because it is a child of God, — and is 
honest, with the genuine and thorough honesty that goes 
unbent through all temptations, needs no certificates, 
hides behind no corporation privileges, — and stands as 
much in awe of the divine law of right in a servant or of- 
fice-boy, as in any board of trade or missions, and would 
as soon be a defaulter to the most merciless creditor of 
the exchange, as to a mechanic or a slave ; — a Christian 
justice. " For if any man have not the spirit of Christ, 
he is none of his." 

The hiding of our life with Christ corrects the theo- 
logical error of these modern times, which treats religion 
as a product of humanity, a discovery of mortal inge- 
nuity, rather than as a help let down from Heaven. 
Christianity is not an invention of the ages, but a revela- 
tion from on high. Our common religious notions are 
vitiated by the idea that we are to make ourselves accept- 
able. A few conquests over matter, a few surprises of 
science, have flattered us into the conceit that the Infinite 
One must look with vast complacency on our attain- 
ments, and so we come to substitute decorum for piety. 
A simpler and heartier reception of Christ within would 
expel this eternal self-reference, self-measurement, self- 
inspection. There was a grand thought in that saying 
of a believer of the primitive stamp, — " I do not want 
to possess a faith ; I want a faith that shall possess me." 
The safest strength of the heart is the feeling of complete 
dependence. Paul was no sentimentalist, and no mystic. 
Such common sense and such bravery have hardly got 



THE HIDDEN LIFE. 



327 



into the Church's brain and sinews since j but he said, 
knowing what he said, " When I am weak, then am I 
strong." There is something in this self-renouncing and 
trusting temper that makes piety fragrant with the air 
of Gethsemane. You find it only where you find the 
life hid with Christ in God. 

The subject completes its circle, and so it comes close 
home. This inner life in Christ, with all its power and 
peace, is offered to the soul, because otherwise the soul 
is weak and dark. We long, occasionally at least, — do 
we not? — for reconciliation with the Almighty Spirit 
that lives and breathes on every side of us, in these skies 
and shores, these heart-beats in our breasts, and these 
pulses of the ocean on the beach. Which one of these 
hearts is satisfied with what it is ? Which of you is con- 
tent — deeply, thoroughly content — with a decorous and 
prosperous and cultured career ? Is there no crying out, 
from within, for the living God ? Does not the infi- 
nite and solemn mystery challenge us from the hours of 
suffering, and of silence, and even of gladness itself? 
Does not the very beauty of the earth and the sea and 
the sky awaken an awful sense of the " light that never 
was on sea or shore " ; and does not society sometimes 
leave you weary and hungry and cold, and is not the 
fulness of joy attended by an emptiness that the world 
with its largest promise cannot fill ? Have you not spir- 
itual sensibility enough to feel yet that you are poor 
and blind and miserable and sinful, before God ? 

These, then, are all inner voices beseeching for the life 
that is hid with Christ in God. And so these blind and 
beggared aspirations that the Spirit planted in us, lying 
helpless by the way-side before, so soon as some startling 
sound of Providence, or admonition of pain, informs them 



328 



THE HIDDEN LIFE. 



that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by, lift their supplica- 
tions, like Bartimeus, and cry, " Jesus, thou Son of Da- 
vid, have mercy on me." Everything in us that is truest 
and tenderest in some sense asks for the Christ. Our 
intellects entreat for him who knew all that was in man. 
Our affections yearn toward him who so loved us as to 
give himself for us. Our sympathies supplicate him who 
took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses. Our house- 
hold love winds itself about the gentle form that left 
Jerusalem and its pomps, at nightfall, for the retirement 
of Bethany, where were Mary and Martha and Lazarus. 
Our tears cry out for Him who wept at his friend's grave. 
Our pain demands Him who through suffering is made 
perfect, and bore the nameless agonies of the Garden. 
Our more generous affections lay hold on the disinter- 
ested Lord that died, " the just for the unjust," bringing 
many sons into glory. Our joy takes a loftier freedom 
and a holier tranquillity, when it rises after Him who re- 
joiced in spirit, and said, " Now is the Son of Man glo- 
rified." Our energies are braced to new labors when we 
are with Him who affirmed, " My Father worketh hither- 
to, and I work." Our fainting hopes for another life 
clins: to the ascended Master who is the resurrection. 
But more than all does our penitence beseech, with groan- 
ings that cannot be uttered, for the healing of his cross. 
Thus, through all its deepest organs, the soul is kept mer- 
cifully restless, till it tastes of the life that is hid with 
Christ in God. At the last, if never before, amidst its 
final intellectual victories, humanity takes up the words 
of one of its own imperial children, and says, with Mi- 
chel Angelo, writing, in his old age, to Vasari : 

" Well-nigh the voyage now is overpast, 
And my frail bark, through troubled seas and rude, 
Draws near that common haven where, at last, 



THE HIDDEN LIFE. 



329 



Of every action, be it evil or good, 

Must due account be rendered. Well I know 

How vain will then appear that favored art, 

Sole idol long and monarch of my heart ; 

For all is vain that man desires below. 

And now remorseful thoughts my soul alarm, 

That which must come, and that beyond the grave ; 

Picture and sculpture lose their feeble charm, 

And to that Help divine I turn for aid, 

Who from the cross extends his arms to save." 

We have touched only the borders of this great theme. 
"What else than outlines can we hope to trace here, at 
best, of a doctrine so interior and so profound as the in- 
ward relation of the believer to his Lord ? I have called 
it a practical doctrine ; and because, when it is received, 
it affects with surpassing power the practice of the Chris- 
tian life. The most intensely practical are the vital and 
comprehensive truths that lie deep among the springs 
of action and emotion, and bind us to the invisible. 
This doctrine is practical to the soul, as the root is 
practical to the tree, as principles are to policies, as spirit 
is to body, as love to life, as feeling to experience ; and 
just as the Ascension, the Transfiguration, the Cross, are 
practical powers of the New Testament, more than feed- 
ing the five thousand with bread, or paying Csesar his tax. 
Yes ; whatever reaches down to the sources of our be- 
ing, whatever changes the great central currents of our 
purpose, whatever transfigures our conduct, regenerates 
our nature, and thus moves us to a diviner practice ev- 
ery way, — that is practical. When our faith does this, 
it is a practical faith. And by no appeal does it lay a 
firmer hold on honest convictions, or animate holier ener- 
gies, than when, by the Spirit's favor, it shows us the 
beauty and the strength of that "life that is hid with 
Christ in God." 

28* 



SEEMON XXII. 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP.* 

FOR WE ARE THE CIRCUMCISION, WHICH WORSHIP GOD IN THE 
SPIRIT, AND REJOICE IN CHRIST JESUS, AND HAVE NO CONFI- 
DENCE IN THE FLESH. — Phil. iii. 3. 

A scholar, trained at the feet of Gamaliel, kneels be- 
fore " the Father, in spirit " ; a Pharisee of the strictest 
sect has his shrunk heart expanded into "joy in Christ 
Jesus " ; a proud professor, blameless touching the Law, 
feels " no confidence in the flesh." " We are the circum- 
cision," he says ; — says it boldly, after this thorough re- 
adjusting of his religious relations. He thought so, as a 
Jew, when there was none to dispute the claim. As a 
Christian, with all Jewry despising that claim, he is sure 
of it. The honor that his Jewish orthodoxy had held with 
a formal acceptance, now, emerging into the Christian 
heresy, he seizes with a fresh instinct and a more ner- 
vous appreciation. "What was the dull privilege of con- 
formity, he finds burnished by the stripes of persecution 
into a vivid and positive advantage. 

For an advantage it unquestionably must be. To say, 
' We are the circumcision " ; to be clearly conscious of 

* Preached before the " Autumnal Convention " at Portsmouth, New 
Hampshire, October 8, 1851. 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



331 



standing in the right line of spiritual descent ; to hold in 
our veins the dignity shed by the elder covenants ; to feel 
our life come " trailing " such " clouds " of transmitted 
" glory," as the lustre of ephod and Shekinah, Law and 
oracles ; to be clad, at our swaddling, with the invisible 
sanctities of Abraham's trust, and Eli's reverence, and 
Samuel's singleness, and Gideon's courage, and Isaiah's 
ardor; to inherit, at baptism, such ancestral gifts as the 
saintly memory of martyrs, and the breath of ancient lit- 
anies ; — it is no mean distinction, that it should be 
scorned; it is no unproductive element in our expecta- 
tions, that we should alienate it without cause. 

Thoughtful students can hardly doubt that God has 
meant his Church to maintain an historic unity. No lat- 
eral nor upward bend in its growth has ever been so ab- 
rupt as to choke the sap or sever the sweet commerce of 
any branch with the root. Even through the most vio- 
lent divergence the channel of Church life ever suffered, 
there yet flowed the old tide of immortal hope. Each 
moral revolution in Christendom, no less than each theo- 
logical variation, proves that the essence of faith is not 
perishable. The radical principle reappears, as sound 
against the tooth of time as it is elastic under the hori- 
zontal contortions of the sects. Something of the primi- 
tive power goes into the least offshoot. The bond of 
every little budding brotherhood with Christ, the Vine, 
is vascular ; because the Church is organic. The three 
dispensations lay their ordaining hands on its head, with 
patriarchal blessings, with Levitical unction, with a 
Gospel baptism. Let any holy family pitch its tent 
where it will, it shall not be out of that divine order, — 
reaching backward and forward, — Calvary, Sinai, and 
Mamre. We are bound in by the constraint of so heav- 



332 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



enly a hospitality ; and the measure of our piety is pre- 
cisely the measure of our nearness to the Lord. 

But, blended with this law of its history, the Church 
has to recognize another, constantly counterbalancing the 
gravitation towards indolence that might accrue from the 
former alone, and checking its complacency. For as it 
advances its stakes and pushes forward its march, some 
unexpected crisis is always breaking up the old distribu- 
tion of forces ; the original Providence readjusts the lines, 
— crosses the nominal with the true, the formal with the 
spiritual, and at all angles. Dismissing former tests of 
legitimacy, it brings fresh affiliations into the family, 
showing those often to be of " the circumcision " that 
had before been reckoned with the alienage ; and dis- 
owning sons that forfeit favor by sinning against the 
Holy Ghost. A Continental Protestant has lately com- 
plained that, in France, men claim to be Christians by 
birth. Bringing their heraldry over from the court into 
the chapel, they really offer as a qualification for com- 
munion, not a confession of faith, but a pedigree. Some- 
thing like this has always been a presumption of relig- 
ious majorities. And, as if to rebuff it with practical 
refutations, the propensity to prescription is no sooner 
settled, than a reformation is sent to disturb it. A cor- 
ruption has to be offset by an act of surgical violence. 
Some Paul of Samosata, a type of worldly luxury, or 
some Constantine, of numerical power, or some Popish 
lineage, is always secularizing the Church, and then, 
some impracticable Wycliffe, dissenting Baxter, or erratic 
Huss, sloughs the form, to act out the substance. Hyp- 
ocrites vitiate the succession, and heretics ennoble the 
new blood. On some wild olive-stock are grafted the 
prolific juices of Christian life. When the Jews refuse 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



333 



the Apostle of their salvation, lo ! he turns to the Gentiles. 
As if purposely to break up confidence in mere ecclesi- 
asticism, and clear the Gospel of bondage, the visible 
Church is scarcely at any epoch suffered to enfold the 
Church spiritual with a clean circumference. And the 
instant any majority begins to be at ease in Zion, some 
terrible prophet, fed on locusts and wild honey, with iron 
hands and lightning on his lips, comes crying out of the 
wilderness, "Repent!" shows what " the circumcision." 
is, and turns the world of the Rabbins upside down. But 
always, observe, the old faith goes into the living body. 

So at the present moment the indications seem to fore- 
show that the old order is to be much broken; — scepti- 
cism says, to be finally dissolved, — faith says, to make 
room for a new and fairer order, descending like a bride 
out of heaven. 

Thinking men seem more and more to agree, that un- 
less a fresh dispensation does set in, acting by new affin- 
ities, yet bringing on the old spiritual powers, the king- 
dom of Christ must become a kingdom of this world. 
For this fatal issue may accrue, not only by the ever- 
present solicitations of worldliness, but by the voluntary 
flinging off of our hereditary relations, seeking by some 
mortal contrivance, and outside of the Christian family, 
the blessing that can fall only under the parental nurture 
of a Divine Past. 

I shall be meeting an existing case, therefore, if I intro- 
duce to you the question, What is the inheritable blood? 
What are the conditions, so far as we can discern them, of 
that heirship in the spiritual fold ? Who are " the circwn- 
cision"? 

It urges the subject into more importance, that Chris- 
tendom, at present, offers proofs of so mischievous a dis- 



334 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



regard for anything like an organic unity of believers; 
that we are so much more committed to a habit of con- 
templating the Church as plural than as one; that we 
have so far lost the conception of the majesty of a uni- 
versal co-operation for regenerating and saving ends ; in 
short, that we are so careless whether we are of " the 
circumcision," or not. 

In opening an answer to the inquiry proposed, I shall 
not need to travel out of the method so satisfactorily fur- 
nished by the text : " We are the circumcision, which 
worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, 
and have no confidence in the flesh." 

I. " Which worship God in the spirit." The first 
proof of spirituality is prayer ; and the most subtle dis- 
order invades our religion when it waives an act of be- 
lief so primary. Among the sophistries that drug our 
interior sense is this, — that the children need not even 
ask their Father for salvation. " Under the Infinite Pity 
that softens the sides," it says, — " watched by a kind- 
ness so indiscriminate and so universal as God's must 
be, if he is Love, — indulged by a fond Deity, that 
revolts at anguish, and never waits to bless, — we have 
only to build our headstrong civilization up, and. ply our 
petty industries among the vineyards here, unanxious 
about our intercourse with Heaven." The fallacy lies in 
the very posture of the heart that can tolerate itself in 
such a plea. Unless the worship of the Father is a priv- 
ilege that the soul cannot refuse itself and live, then the 
devices of an institutional religion are only an impo- 
sition on ourselves ; and the prayer that does not breathe 
itself forth by an impulse so spontaneous that it cannot 
be kept back, is nothing but a barren form of mechanical 
friction, where the galvanizing of the sensibility exhausts 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



335 



the strength on which sensibility depends. The moment 
we come to think of apologizing for a prayeiiess piety, 
our faces are already turned aloof from God. When we 
compose that apology of a reliance on God's com- 
passion, we are lying against His Witness, and the 
grand old Puritanic element in all valiant piety, — awe 
at God's sovereignty, — has vanished from our flaccid 
sinews. 

Of substitutes for " worship in spirit," our tendencies 
specially encourage two. The first is a notion which, in 
popular speech, gets no more definite expression than that 
forms of devotion are absolute hinderances, and that God 
can be adored more simply in his own works than in 
man's temples ; but which rises under a more refined 
nurture, through different channels, — of artistic ecstasy, 
mystical contemplation, or philosophical abstraction, — 
into the sombre dignity of Pantheism. The impatient 
youth, bewitched by the conceits engendered in him 
under crude studies, sallies into the fields on Sunday 
morning, elate with the discovery that the sky is larger 
than the meeting-house ; and because his mother had 
the holy instinct to tell him, among her lullabies, what 
Christianity had the grace to whisper down through 
the ages to her, — that God built and keeps and loves 
his world, — he illustrates his gratitude by ignoring his 
dependence. The artistic devotee sees divinity enough 
in the majesty moulded under the hands of the old mas- 
ters ; why bend before God seeing in secret, when color 
and form manifest him, — and what need of a better 
Intercessor than Raphael ? The Mystic lifts a venerating 
glance at the Infinite ; what wonder that his worship of 
the Mighty Inane should be inanity ? The Peripatetic 
tells you to follow hard after your ideals of perfec- 



336 SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 

tion, and not be tormented by verbal petitions to a 
Jehovah that after all is only the varying reflection of 
a human conception, and therefore his immutability a 
logical impossibility. And the latest apology of all for 
prayerless worshippers is that of 'a sentimentalist, who 
announces that, when we are nearest to God, we are too 
near him to speak to him ! 

The mischief is not shut up to the schools. It oozes 
out from the few scholarly circles that hold it with a 
kind of scholastic innocence, and drips down upon the 
masses of society, — trickling its popular poison even 
where the formulas that should define it would not be 
accepted, nor quite understood. Now and then it gets a 
pulpit for its receptacle, and some ordained Platonist for 
its vender. Perhaps most of us have known what it is 
to be so far borne up from the common level of emo- 
tions, when we have stood in the presence of some sub- 
limity or loveliness in nature, as to have half suspected 
in ourselves some new-born religious consecration ; and 
yet, on returning to the old routine of business vexa- 
tions, political compromises, and domestic trials, have 
found the impression fleeting, and no permanent contri- 
bution lodged in character. You have mistaken the 
mythological influences of a starlighted sky for lessons 
of faith ; and it is not till you stand under them, stripped 
of hope, shelterless as Lear, or solitary like Shelley, or 
bereaved like Burke, that you see how the blazing canopy 
that animated your poetic reverie is cold as the marble 
dome, it looked to childish wonder, — that the forehead 
of midnight droops with no answer to your sighs, — 
that its splendor is not the warm light of Home, — that 
among its constellated diagrams shines no promise of a 
Resurrection. 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



337 



Or will you try the experiment for a different relief ? 
Come, then, to a scene universally acknowledged to be 
one of the most impressive outwardly, — some shore of 
the sounding ocean. But come there when conscience 
is laying its scourge upon your heart ; when remorse 
chases you with inexorable fury ; when the agonizing 
conviction of a violated faith and an offended God so 
pierces and haunts you, that no ingenuity can toss it 
off, no gayety disarm it, no inebriety narcotize it, — 
and all that you have you would give for a quiet spirit. 
It is no unfamiliar emergency. What, then, says the 
steady beat of the waters to you, as they break against 
their barrier ? There, if anywhere^ you might cast your- 
self, prayerless, on those orderly appointments of Nature 
that have perverted your homage ; for there the stability 
of Nature, matching her rule of resistance against her 
ficklest element, daily solving the beautiful equation of 
a swinging globe with its tides balanced against a shelv- 
ing beach of pebbles, plants the finest symbol of her 
regularity. What hope, then, do the winds that have 
been wrestling so mightily with the sea, from continent 
to continent, bear in upon your bosom, from this wide 
search upon the deep ? You might as well listen at the 
perished shrine of a Delphic oracle ; you might as well 
spell out some chance response from the withered leaves 
of the Sibyl's cave. No rest from the waves ; no par- 
don from the breeze! But, come back to the Saviour 
that once stilled the sea, and the tenderness that taught 
us to pray, saying " Our Father," tells us of the joy in 
heaven over every sinner that repenteth. The magdalen 
is accepted. The prodigal is welcome. 

But man is something more than a sufferer to be con- 
soled, or a penitent to be restored. He is a workman 

29 



338 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



that must work out his salvation, and needeth not to be 
ashamed ; he is a soldier under the Tempter's siege, and 
his summons is to " come off more than conqueror." 
Consider the fundamental mistake, if he persuades him- 
self the earth he works on does not depend from Heaven ; 
his dismal profligacy, if, instead of confronting his daily 
engagement in the armor of a lowly prayer, he spends his 
energies in laboriously forgetting the Almighty, and, 
with the price of a crippled manhood, buys himself 
orphanage. Boasting our noonday light, some of us, 
scarcely visited by that beam of truth that gleamed even 
on the Stoic twilight of Aratus and Cleanthes, deny that 
we are God's offspring. 

And so a distinct form of naturalism is propagated 
among us, under the doctrine that the highest aim of 
man is self-culture, — or the development of the natural 
faculties. " Man is here on earth," says a careful state- 
ment of an able anti-supern atur alist , "to unfold and 
perfect himself, as far as possible, in body and spirit; 
that is the purpose, the end, the scope and final cause of 
individual life on earth." " The chief end of man," says 
another religious philosophy, " is to glorify God and 
keep his commandments." 

Under the legitimate and logical ultimate results of a 
theology of self-development, worship would be impos- 
sible ; though it may survive in its modified and mixed 
degrees, just as virtue survives in Antinomianism. 

Or if some tender feeling remains, asking a God to 
worship, still its worship cannot be to the personal, ob- 
jective God, manifest in Christ. Nor can it amount to 
anything more than a pious thrift, adoring God for the 
sake of a profitable reaction on our own interest, subsi- 
dizing Heaven into an instrument for private elevation. 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



339 



The malady that ails the virtue of our people is, that 
it seeks to multiply noble means, misconceiving the 
means for the end. Not sunk to sottish Mammonism, it 
yet thinks to get signally through life, and comfortably 
out of it, with no direct recognition, confession, worship, 
of a personal God, — Witness, Judge, Searcher of Hearts, 
Hearer of Prayer. It constructs, with or without philoso- 
phy, some specious system of abstract principles, max- 
ims of prudential morality, rules of self-preservation, and, 
fancying it will stand all shocks, and meet all tests, bows 
itself in the house of Eimmon. But let rain and wind 
and flood beat upon it, — some fiercer onset of temper, 
— some secret occasion for a safer fraud in business, — 
some cooler infliction of bad faith in a debtor, — some 
bitterer buffeting of political scorn, — and it slides from 
its sandy foundation. 

And if errors so disastrous creep in among the less 
besotted moods of men, because no " worship of the 
Father " forestalls them, what shall be in the lower de- 
basements of selfishness and sensuality, — when foul 
appetites put God's descending angels to flight, — when 
the scramble for money, for social standing, for pioneer- 
ing in fashion, stifles even the natural aspiration, and 
Belial drugs the conscience, only to kill it more securely 
in the dark ? What shall hinder, when society comes to 
be an abandoned Ephraim, " let alone " for his idols, 
playing on to gain the world at every hazard, that he 
shall lay at last his very immortality down, a burnt sacri- 
fice, on its pagan altar ? 

Brethren, there must be prayer to hallow labor. There 
must be faith to consecrate enterprise. There must be 
holiness to sanctify business. There must be a cordial 
u Thy will be done," uttered to a personal God, to inter- 



340 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



pret suffering. The most inward desires, the purest 
affections, the loftiest aspirings, that stir our blood, — all 
that is tender in us and all that is strong, all that is sa- 
cred and all that is enduring, — pain and loss, love and 
death, repentance and fear, — as each in turn through 
all this solemn discipline of life has its hour of trial or of 
triumph, — cry out for the living God, and bid us wor- 
ship the Father in spirit. 

"Without a living worship of the living God, not only 
will these mortal multitudes be satisfied with nothing, 
and repose in nothing, but they will at last believe in 
nothing. The age of stark denial will return, on a wider 
theatre than ever, with the added armament of all the 
science and skill of the new era. And we shall see, — 
what some close observers think they begin to see por- 
tents of, in some quarters, already, — while much that is 
excellent and moral and just remains, devotion, devotion 
herself, — that single and unmistakable and untrans- 
mutable thing, — driven first from the bosom to the 
church, and then from the church into the fields, and 
there evaporated into something so like earthly air, as 
not to be inconsistent with profanity, nor preventive al- 
ways of infamy. This is the atheism — sometimes 
taken for the Gospel — of to-day. 

The materialistic views must probably be tried, both 
by the mind and the heart of Christendom ; but unless 
human nature is reconstructed from what it was when 
the old saints lived, or when the old infidels died, they 
will be found wanting by both. The favorite result they 
propose is social liberation and progress. And so long- 
as the traditional influence of supernaturalism should 
linger about their new economy, they would doubtless 
see fruits of their reformatory attempts. But the second 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



341 



generation, under their culture, would miss, and the third 
would quite forget, that ennobling sentiment of rever- 
ence, which is both the grace and the dignity of a lofty 
civilization. 

There is a stage in the history of most communities, 
as there is in the lives of most persons, when they try 
the experiment of manufacturing a deity of their own. 
Sometimes the conceit takes the form of sordid world- 
liness, and sometimes of philosophical self-sufficiency. 
The one is as unsanctified as the other. I am as far 
from the kingdom of Heaven when I mistake the divini- 
ties of thought for the mind of God, as when I accept 
factories for missions, commerce for a church, and a 
luxurious equipage for heaven. Men are no more docile 
to Gospel truth when they have exchanged their New 
Testaments for Cobbett and Combe, than when they 
have sold their simplicity for dividends ; and it is as dis- 
couraging to a spiritual man to see his friends going to 
the sanctuary having heads drunken with the pride of 
philosophy, as shoulders stooping under bales of mer- 
chandise. Regeneration is the casting away of both 
these soulless idolatries, to " worship God in the spirit." 

II. " And rejoice in Christ Jesus." Coming next 
within the visible limits of the Church, all questions cen- 
tralize more and more in the vital one concerning the 
office of Christ ; whether he came as a great Master of 
the spiritual culture already discussed, a Teacher and an 
Example, — or, superadded to this, as the incarnation of 
God. 

Not dishonoring the importance of great problems in 
church polity, in ecclesiastical fellowship, in the practical 
relations of Christianity to society, this transcends, or 
rather anticipates, them all, 

29* 



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SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



About the principles of righteousness, the thought of 
the world is agreed. That goodness is good, and love 
is better than hatred, and purity and charity are blessed, 
is speculatively settled ; and it only remains for the 
Church, in her practical dealing with men, to force home 
upon the heart truths that can never again be brought 
under controversy. But back of these lies an issue 
where philosophy and faith still claim to be heard in 
argument. "Whether the Church itself is a human school 
or a heavenly ; whether Christ's ministry is summed up 
in his representing a perfect humanity, or whether he 
shoivs us the Father, and brings from heaven a new ele- 
ment to plant in the affairs of the world, — so that his 
Gospel is special as well as absolute, and offers what 
moves upon men with a power wholly peculiar to itself, 
as not only originated, but embodied beyond the sphere 
of nature, — and so whether influences centre in his per- 
son and his death, quite different in kind from any other 
known to us ; — this is a question that is yet to try 
the mind of Christendom with a stress of unparalleled 
intensity. It will need prayers for patience, as well as 
for wisdom. 

Unless the Apostolic language transgresses, not only 
every rule of literal construction, but all parallels in the 
latitude of metaphor, it declares Jesus to be a Redeemer 
\fi some sense that no notion of instruction, or of exem- 
plary character, satisfies. If the terms of the New Tes- 
tament mean only that, they imply a nomenclature so 
anomalous that any expectation of positive knowledge 
from them is unreasonable. And, judging by its work- 
ing on the necessities of experience, the theory is as 
inadequate to the permanent wants of the soul as to the 
Biblical statements. When naturalism, weary of its 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



343 



long ramble through the sciences, and neology, faint with 
stumbling on dark mountains, and poetic self-reliance, 
homesick with its comfortless solitude, shall come kneel- 
ing, to lean again with John on the bosom of Jesus, it 
will be an hour of more majestic triumph than when all 
royalties shall cast their crowns at his feet. 

In two ways we may rob ourselves of the plenitude of 
Christ's redemptive power. 

First, by severing our internal life, in its daily changes, 
from a familiar converse with his person. Coupled with 
a formal recognition of Christ's historical reality, there is 
a frigid distance kept up between his Church and his 
personality. A proposition that the headship of this 
mighty system, reaching through ages, revolutionizing 
kingdoms, and itself a sovereign surviving revolutions, is 
all vested in a Judsean peasant, whose personal relations 
to it ceased before he was thirty-five years old, — is thus 
made to cut off the friendly arteries by which the life 
should stream from the heart into the members. Faith 
petitions, on the other hand, that it may have leave to 
sit at the Saviour's feet, now ; and, with a clearer trust 
than hers who sat there at Bethany, to say, not, " Lord, 
if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died," but, 
" Lo, thou art with us always." Humanity will realize 
its complete proportions only by conscious membership 
with a Head who fills all the chambers in his Church with 
the glory of his presence, and all its veins with his blood, 
and all its body with his breath, to-day. What less can 
these strong sayings signify? — "He that hath the Son 
hath life " ; " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, 
and drink his blood, ye have no life in you " ; u Your 
life is hid with Christ in God " ; " God forbid that I 
should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.* 1 



344 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



It is no unusual spectacle, I think, to see young per- 
sons among us — for these sore conflicts of aspiration 
with attainment are always most tragical and affecting 
in the young — yearning for some effectual doctrine of 
reconciliation, as the desert implores the sky for rain ; 
and probing, with pain unspeakable, into their own 
diseased spirits, — intellectually analyzing their restless 
state, counting their prayers, chiding their sluggishness, 

— looking in distress from their imperfect lives to the 
perfect standard, and back from the standard to their 
short-comings. They wonder religion is made so stern a 
mistress ; they ask, almost in despair, " Is there no rest 
to the heart from this endless strife ? " You tell them 
they must outgrow the imperfection, add virtue to virtue, 
toil away at the wheel, and when they are pure enough, 
they will be happy. But, O short-sighted counsellor, 
mocking their grief! do you not see that the very want 
they are wrestling and gasping under, is a want of peace 
before they are perfect, — on the way, and under the sun 
and dust of the struggle ? And is it not possible that 
that is what the Gospel of forgiveness and redemption 
brings them ? 

Reconciliation they want ; and the moment they for- 
get what they are and are not, or have and have not, to 
cast their burden on a Saviour, believing with the heart 
that by that act alone they are already justified and free, 
then they are taken up out of themselves and their heart- 
aches into heavenly harmony with God, and know the 
joy of adoption. There are states of the soul, when, 
after his long perplexities and morbid introspections, 
instead of dwelling with ascetic self-maceration on his ex- 
perience, the disciple's first need is to forget it altogether, 

— to let the thoughts, jaded with this eternal chafing 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



345 



in the prison-house of consciousness, spring away into 
healthful liberty, — from deploring what self has left un- 
done, to centre a grateful praise on what Christ has 
done. Faith bids these groaning hearts not to toil for 
ever to loose the knot, by the intellect, in the dungeon ; 
but, throwing the tangled problem of good and evil 
down, to swing the door wide open, and let the light of 
the Father's face shine down into the breast. For, as a 
searching writer has said, " After we are in peace and 
power, self-analysis is instructive, humbling, and bra- 
cing ; but while we are cold and dead, it is a poisonous 
thing, like a draft of quinine while the ague fit is on." 

Others there are, who try to come near to Christ by 
studying, intellectually again, with busier industry, the 
incidents of his life, as if bare erudition, even in the 
writing of Evangelists, could tranquillize remorse ; an- 
other, by integrity, — and he exhibits an uprightness mag- 
nanimous enough to shame Aristides, — but yet he does 
not feel the breath of his Master ; another, by philan- 
thropy, ardent enough to outburn Howard's or Sarah 
Martin's, but not constant with the constancy of Him 
who, having loved his own, loved them unto the end. 

Now, under the fatigues of this mortal struggle, the 
flesh lusting against the spirit, we want an instant re- 
lief, as well as a future rest, — a Christ who can say to 
our affections, " Lo ! I am with you even before the end 
of the world " ; while he also says to our hope, " I am 
the resurrection." We need the presence, as well as the 
promise. We want to know that Christ has overcome 
the world, and that we are, this hour, joint heirs with 
him in the conquered heritage. 

And thus opens the second deviation from a right 
Christology, in an attempt at self-salvation. 



346 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



For the more earnestly a man asks himself whether 
his life is worthy of God's acceptance, the more utterly 
hopeless of acceptance, on the score of worthiness, he 
must become. The only standard given him, out of the 
cross, by which to measure himself, is the perfect one, 
and contains no provision for short-comings. Held un- 
der it by requirements he never can fulfil, — subject to a 
law he never can keep, — conscious that self creeps into 
his best aims, and sin defiles his purest services, — and 
yet nowhere told that he may partly violate the com- 
mandment, — where does he stand ? On the platform 
of -the Pharisee. His piety is hard, barren, Jewish. He 
cannot ask to be saved, till he has hardihood enough to 
claim salvation for Ms merits. When shall we learn that 
we are never to be saved by our own deeds, nor in our 
own way, but by the heart full of faith in what our Lord 
has done, — in God's way, by his Christ ? To attempt 
a retreat from this central Gospel hope to the Jew's sal- 
vation in payment for good works, is as futile as Julian's 
was, when he sought to rebuild the Hebrew temple at 
Jerusalem, to falsify the prophecy of the Son of Man. 

We may baptize the interesting displays of an inter- 
mittent virtue with a Christian name, but they may yet 
contain no scintilla of Christ's distinctive light. They 
may leave the life all untouched by its unrivalled aurora, 
however resplendent their own beauty. Their sterile 
justice is not the justice that treats men honestly because 
they are God's children, — which was the law of Christ's 
great honesty. Their kindness is not redolent of the 
beatitudes. Their moderation is not guarded by those 
mighty warders, reverence for God and the Saviour's 
love. Their liberty is not that " where the Spirit of the 
Lord is." Nor is their wonder devout with the fervor of 
Olivet and Gethsemane. 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



347 



It is common with some writers to abandon the ground 
of salvation by merits, rhetorically, even admitting its 
opposite, by a sort of parenetic license, for spiritual util- 
ity ; but still to reserve it as defensible by philosophy. 
Now it is precisely the philosophical element in religion 
that most emphatically rejects the idea of a spiritual sal- 
vation by merit ; because, the moment the whole aim 
and energy are concentrated on self, that moment the 
noblest grace of piety is gone. A profound science of 
human nature discovers nothing more clearly than that 
faith in objective Help is a principle of action overmas- 
tering all aims that conclude in personal results, and more 
in harmony with all the higher laws of the soul. When 
Paul simply said, 6i Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and thou shalt be saved," he struck a deeper vein in 
man's inward economy than all the stirring champions 
of education. He announced a law of spiritual growth, 
eternal, practical, and by some of its relations omnipres- 
ent to our experience. Till we adjust our beliefs to it, 
and conform our lives as well, we are not clear-sighted, 
nor strong-handed, nor is our tent pitched within the 
encampments of the Christian " circumcision." 

When one of our preachers puts it to himself, whether 
a morbid, excessive religiousness is one of the chief ene- 
mies to the salvation of his people, he is struck at find- 
ing how much of the preaching that reaches the ears of 
one denomination is only an oblique rebound from the 
short-comings of another, and so, where it lights, less 
nourishing than the east wind. Enthusiasm is not our 
peril. We want righteousness much, but faith first, the 
root, the quickener, the animus and inspiration of the 
other. 

We may call these humiliating doctrines ; but are 



348 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



they half so humiliating as those ever-present facts in life, 
• — sorrow and shame ? Does not the law run through 
all our being, that we must find peace by sacrifice, — must 
go to rest through struggle ? Every field of heroic strife ; 
martyrs' stakes and scaffolds ; fastings and pilgrimages ; 
blood running in rivers ; the songs of dying patriots ; 
strains like those that rung from Madame Roland's dun- 
geon the night before her execution ; the Puritans' pri- 
vations ; prophets wet with dews, or walking through fur- 
naces of fire ; — all stand as grand historic monuments of 
the law, No pain, no progress. Yet what we allow to 
the earthly triumphs of liberty or country, we grudge for 
the victory of eternal life. 

Christ humiliates us by showing us our unworthiness, 
that he may exalt us in due time, and glorify us with 
seats at his right hand. He bends us in something of 
David's prostration, that we may rise on the wings of 
Isaiah's rapture. Have we not served idols ? And so 
we must be mourning captives in Babylon, hanging 
our harps on weeping willows, before we can return with 
joy. The cross is an offence ; we must be content to 
come after a Man of sorrows, — him whose visage was 
marred more than the countenance of any man, — must 
take that cross of offence up, before he will come with 
his Father to take up his abode in our hearts. 

In the striking paradox of one of the mightiest build- 
ers of empire the world ever bore, " There is no force so 
overwhelming, as that whose strength lies in its very 
weakness." And so the most wilful spirit, arriving at its 
new birth, feels that there is no conquest so absolute as 
when all the heart submits, and no self-possession so sure 
as when self is utterly renounced. 

In the very midst of the deep waters of that wondrous 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



349 



passage, whereby discipline proves and. purifies the dis- 
ciple, it must have been an obdurate spirit that was not 
ready sometimes to cry, " O blessed violence of Love, 
that quells, even with penitential grief, this wild revolt of 
passions ! — O merciful Cross, that cools this cruel fever 
of ambition ! — O healing Hand, that doubles my agony 
for an hour, that I might have heavenly health for ever ! " 

Imagine even our noblest achievements, the churches, 
and benevolent brotherhoods, and missionary societies, 
assembled to lift an anthem of united praise ; the refrain 
of their thanksgiving must ever be, " Not unto us, not 
unto us, O Lord, but unto thy name, be the glory." 

We want a life hid with Christ in God. And herein 
the religion revealed in Christ meets us. Holding up to 
our aspirations an object beyond ourselves, it makes faith 
in Him a surer test of acceptance than any outward 
works, and stimulates our affections by showing us a 
Mediator. Something without us to lay hold of ; an arm 
from above to lean upon ; a Saviour to go to, and walk 
by ; a Father to trust in and forget our little selves in 
glorifying; — this is the "circumcision," both " worship- 
ping the Father in spirit," and "rejoicing in Christ Je- 
sus." 

III. " No confidence in the flesh." At this point the 
text's definition of "the circumcision" changes from a 
positive form to a negative. I shall follow this variation; 
adverting to some of the more comprehensive and more 
instant obstacles both to the spiritual reviving of the 
Church and to the unity which can never come without 
its reviving. 

Christendom shows a general expectancy of some fresh 
dispensation of the Spirit. I ask you to glance, in what 
remains, at those chief stumbling-blocks which Christen- 

30 



350 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



dom itself — and our portion of it along with the rest — 
is most tempted to cast in the way of such an outpouring 
of the Holy Ghost, and such a gathering of the Christian 
clans ; — un teachableness in the doctrine of sin ; intellect- 
ual dogmatism, whether as abstract from images of life 
or imperious over the emotions ; a confounding of virtue 
with religion ; ceremonialism ; a provincial species of 
ecclesiasticism ; and denominational intolerance. 

Js it true, or is it not, that in most of our congregations 
family prayer steadily declines ? Is it true, that the very 
naming of such a test of spiritual security shocks some 
liberal judgments ? Is it true, that, of the young persons 
nurtured in our Sunday schools, so few distinctly recog- 
nize in themselves a Christian aim, or join the visible 
Christian body, — that in many cases the Church is a 
lean minority of the congregation, composed chiefly of 
females and aged men, drawn to it by a rare tempera- 
ment, or driven in by some stress of sorrow ? Is it true, 
that even strong spiritual impressions and impulses fail 
constantly to be consolidated into a consistent character, 
for want of a deep and definite faith to crystallize upon 
and abide by ? Is it quite general, that a superior right- 
eousness of life atones for the latitude of speculation, — 
and is it not true, that conventionalism and formality 
come into our assemblies, in an average proportion, as 
the wealthy and fashionable classes come, and that, while 
we propose a spiritual walk, through some excess of hos- 
pitality worldliness clings tenaciously to our skirts ? 

One almost shudders to consider how terrible an open- 
ing might be made into the religion of the times, if its 
nominal friends were to make candid answer to this 
question : Suppose a permanent personal immunity from 
pain could be guaranteed without religion, how many of 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



351 



them would feel it rather a relief to be rid of religion al- 
together ? 

I have laid it down as the distinctive office of Christ 
in the world, and in the individual heart, to introduce a 
new element of religious life, and to furnish a special re- 
lief from sin. The whole appeal, then, of his Gospel is 
to the felt need of this heart. The old system is right 
in laying so urgent a stress on conviction of sin. The 
grand significance of the Gospel is help. The measure 
of man's eagerness to receive help, — is it not his feeling 
of helplessness ? It is no secret, probably, that in most 
of the persons we meet in the streets, and even in our 
meeting-houses, it would be difficult to find any such 
thing as a vital consciousness of sin, at all. 

Go to a successful worldling, comfortably cushioned 
among his flourishing fortunes, his selfish habits, and his 
fashionable family, and tell him of his sin. You speak 
of a difficulty, a discontent, an empty heart. What dif- 
ficulty, what discontent, what emptiness ? Have not his 
notes good securities ? Did he not sleep well last night ? 
Will not the choice selections of the market smoke upon 
his table to-morrow ? Sin ? He has found a way of 
disposing of all that annoyance as conveniently as of 
some doubtful mortgage. Your praying publican was a 
poor fanatic, and his penitence a piece of wild extrava- 
gance, putting the case far worse than it really was. 
This abasing doctrine of conviction and confession, for 
a gentleman, a man of quality, a master of half a million 
of money, — it is an impertinence. 

A specious answer, I know, may be made, — that an 
active life, busy with profitable work, is doing something 
better than deploring its short-comings. But answer, 
again, how profitable, or permanent, that work is, which 



352 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



does not begin and end in a sense of submission to God, 
— or how noble work can be, not dignified by the spirit- 
ual meditation that must so often terminate in a confes- 
sion of utter unworthiness. Clarkson's brilliant retort, to 
the inquiry about his soul, that he had no time so much 
as to consider whether he had a soul, has been much 
worn by quotation, and never quoted, as I am aware, 
but to be admired. The earnest witticism is justified, 
perhaps, as it leaped from Clarkson's lips ; but converted 
from the impromptu extravagance it was, into the delib- 
erate maxim of conduct it was never meant to be, it is 
as mischievous as it is shallow. Modern Philosophy has 
followed in that line a little ; and to her loss. The un- 
spiritualizing of moral enterprises comes of it; the self- 
unchurching of noble reforms comes of it ; the dislocation 
of Christian symmetry, the divorce of labor and prayer, 
the orphanage of Human Charity herself, comes of it. 

Again, the understanding may plan and rear a house ; 
but only the heart can warm it with sunny friendships, 
and twine the grace of sweet charities about its door- 
posts, and dispose throughout its rooms the benignant 
charm that makes the meaning of a home. And so a 
dogmatic intellect may pile the structure of a creed ; but 
it needs a tenderer confidence to domesticate the soul in 
the temple. 

It would seem as if some rarefying intellectualism, by 
insinuating itself into our modern religious speech, un- 
realized the objects of faith, and emasculated faith itself. 
A truly comprehensive study of God, and of the real 
conditions under which he must be revealed, makes it 
more than doubtful whether we have gained a more ac- 
curate, or even a more spiritual conception of God, by 
discarding what is called the anthropopathic imagery of 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



353 



the Old Testament, — representing God as feeling emo- 
tions, joy, grief, pity, like ourselves. The straining after 
literal accuracy dilutes the vigorous conception. Our 
God sometimes seems farther off than the Jewish Jeho- 
vah was, and what we gain to exactness, in our attempts 
to eliminate these material configurations of Deity, is 
worse than lost to trust, in the dissipating of the person- 
ality. So, by the application of a similar process to the 
idea of heaven, representing heaven as nowhere in par- 
ticular, we fail to present it at all, and hope is bereaved 
of heaven ; and by diffusing hell over all of life and the 
world, we take it in such minute particles that it grows 
familiar and tolerable. When you have made all the 
amiable and correct dispositions to constitute and com- 
plete membership in the Christian Church, your Church 
has vanished ; and the moment you have persuaded my 
reason that prayer consists in nothing but want, or aspir- 
ing to an ideal, and wishing well to my neighbors, I am 
no longer of the disciples that their Lord has taught how 
to pray. 

And in this, the New Testament language suits itself, 
by a perfect adaptation, to the nature it addresses and 
would relieve. No ideas charge their symbols, words, 
with such subtile and hidden correspondences as the re- 
ligious, the use made of a single theological term often 
condensing the entire character of a creed. It is the spir- 
itual laws that fit and sanction the rhetorical. A theolo- 
gian may refuse from his studied treatises the sacrificial 
phraseology of the Epistles, as scornfully as a Lollard 
would spurn a picture of the Virgin ; but he will take it 
all back into his prayers, as the iconoclast, after the hav- 
oc was over, lifting his eyes to the lofty arches of the 
cathedra], uncovered his head and knelt. 

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354 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



For the rocks of offence that men put out of their 
path, when they walk forth in the pride of controversy, 
they seldom stumble at in the closet. The devotee 
leans his bosom on the stone that the system-builders 
rejected. 

It is a noble thing to abide by a piety so natural, sin- 
cere, and true, that it never spoils the rich terms of the 
Bible by perverting them into cant. But it is just as 
noble for a piety that is natural, sincere, and true, to hold 
them fast, and choose them for its speech, even though 
Cant has tampered with them, — ignoring her presump- 
tion. 

Doubts about prayer are not answered by argument, 
but by showing the heart how it needs its God. Prob- 
ably no man ever adopted prayer by finding a philo- 
sophic basis for it, but by beginning to cry, " My God, 
my God!" and thus, tempted on by a single taste of 
the holy privilege, the heart takes up the cheerful task 
of persuasion for itself, and the suppliant thence- 
forth prays, because the restraining of prayer would 
be the refusal of his chief desire. And whereas he 
once thought it brave to doubt, he now knows it is 
blessed to believe. 

At first, perhaps, his petitions are the broken entreaties 
of that sad contrition that cried : " Slay me, O God, if 
thou wilt, but leave me not sinful thus. I am miserable ; 
and cannot heal myself. Put me to shame ; I am shame- 
ful. Behold, I hide nothing ; Thou art Light, expose my 
darkness. I will palliate nothing; I am worse than I 
know ; show me all that I am. If I must die, let me die 
in thy light!" But afterwads, when mercy has re- 
assured him, he is able to take a more exultant tone, 
and sing : — 



I 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 355 

" 'T is Love ! 't is Love ! — Thou diedst for me ; 
I hear thy whisper in my heart : 
The morning breaks ; the shadows flee : 
Pure, universal Love thou art. 

" My prayer hath power with God ! the grace 
Unspeakable I now receive : 
In vain I have not wept and strove : 
Thy nature and thy name is Love ! " 

Piety is not always ready to go before the court of 
reason, defensible against every rigorous indictment of 
consistency. Like the poor Scotchwoman, rejected from 
communion with her Lord by her catechising priest, be- 
cause her answers stammered, it breaks into tears as it 
goes disappointed away, crying, " Though I cannot speak 
for my Saviour, I could die for him." " No confidence 
in the flesh." 

There can be no serious difficulty in adjusting the re- 
lations of this new and renewing element in character, 
Faith, to general goodness, piety, benevolence, and in- 
tegrity. 

As the expression — no more than that — of an origi- 
nating and creative faith, the moral decencies bear much 
the same relation to religion that manners bear to 
morals. You will never have the morals without their 
fruit in the manners ; but you will often get the manners 
quite out of company with the morals. Byron said that 
by far the mildest manners he ever met were those of the 
bloodthirsty and remorseless Ali Pacha, and that the 
most civil gentleman he had conversed with picked his 
purse from his pocket. You might as well propound 
George Brummell and Lord Chesterfield for standards 
in pure ethics, as go about to inaugurate a Church of 
God in the world, by recommending dry rules of behav- 
ior. That is not the New Testament method. Christ 



356 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



poises the scales of character implicitly on the heart, and 
the first word of his Apostles everywhere is, " Believe." 

It is because the whole soul is not thus concentrated 
on the love of Christ which constraineth men, putting 
away all " confidence in the flesh," that some branches 
of the Church so invert the relations of the form to the 
substance. Instead of cherishing the inward spirit which 
vitalizes every tabernacle it inhabits, they insist on press- 
ing to their bosoms the moulds it dwelt in once, putting 
antiquarianism for righteousness. Because the cistern 
held the living waters in ancient times, it must stand 
shrinking and warped in the sun, an unsightly encum- 
brance, after the waters have sought other courses. The 
mind, instead of ascending freely from the altar to rest in 
God, and be purified for active effort, is led off by scho- 
lastic fancies, idly busy with the painted windows that 
catch the rays of earthly sunlight. 

It is because we undervalue the religious heart, and 
attach an exclusive importance to religious opinions, that 
we commit so many unprofitable mistakes in our at- 
tempts to increase our ecclesiastical bodies, or denomina- 
tions. For, in answering the question, "Who are " the 
circumcision"? and bidding us put "no confidence in 
the flesh," our doctrine decides inferentially how we are 
to propagate our faith. It bids the Church take up every 
child of her Joins, born within her house, before the sor- 
ceries of the world have wrought their deadly spell upon 
him, and, baptizing him into holy affections, bear him 
straight on into full communion with her Lord. In 
speaking to the prodigals that would wander, it sets re- 
generation before tuition. It shows us that association, 
organization, machinery, are dead, till a living piety burns 
in the hearts of its masters. Bureaus may stand ready, 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



357 



and boards, and officers, and even funds, — though these 
last, being more dependent on zeal, and less attainable by 
cold blood, are not so likely to abound ; but when the 
whole apparatus waits complete, it is only the system of 
wheels within wheels ; what is still wanting is the spirit 
of the living creatures descending into them like lamps of 
fire, lifting them up and driving them on. "Without this, 
we shall only tax, and exhort, and mortify ourselves, in 
vain, — perplexed that the seed-wheat does not grow, 
amazed at our own impotence, scarcely suspecting that 
the real difficulty is, that we are sacrificing all the while 
to our own sectarian net, or burning incense to our de- 
nominational drag, instead of " worshipping the Father, 
and rejoicing in Christ Jesus." Do this, and ye will no 
longer need to say to one another, " Know the Lord. 
For the Lord will create in every dwelling-place in 
Mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and 
smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by 
night." 

Under the normal nurture of Faith, the outward in- 
stitution and the informing life will grow together ; so 
that in the Church, as in the body, 

" Nature, crescent, does not grow alone 
In thews and bulk ; but, as this temple waxes, 
The inward service of the mind and soul 
Grows wide withal." 

Nothing will be done for ostentation, — for a really de- 
vout man will no more parade his piety for exhibition, 
than he will throw his heart into the street ; but the ear- 
nest piety will spontaneously fit to itself a dress and de- 
monstrative apparatus becoming its dignity. The world 
would not be disgusted with imposing ecclesiastical ar- 
rangements, mocking an empty house, but the expanding 



358 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



force will make its way constitutionally, pushing its 
structure no faster than its family. 

You complain that the people are concerned too much 
with the talents — or the want of them — in the minister ; 
and justly. But can you abate that poor ambition, that 
" confidence in the flesh," till you have supplied a loftier 
passion ? Parishes that have no God to worship will 
naturally, out of certain traditional associations that con- 
found the official functionary with the religion, make an 
idol of their preacher ; and it will not be strange if, in 
the end, the incense so works upon his manhood, that he 
becomes literally their preacher, and not Christ's. 

Or if he should not happen to be of substance suffi- 
cient to make an idol of, the people go mourning for 
lack of what they call religion, — the first suspicion some 
societies have that they are godless, arising when they 
lack a minister to stand as a substitute. Plant a diviner 
ground of trust ; plant a living love for Christ, that Head 
of the Church who never fails any of its branches ; and 
the prosperity of a parish will no longer swell and shrink, 
nor its zeal rise and fall from fever-heat to freezing-point, 
by the favor of its servants. 

Hence, too, finally, by this personal power and life of 
piety, in the heart, comes the only hope of Catholicity, — 
the "One Fold" predicted so long. Out of heirship 
comes kinsmanship, and the rule of the one defines the 
other. 

All direct labor for a mere marrying of creeds, a blend- 
ing of sects, and mortising of platforms, is false ; for it 
turns off the mind from the ineffable glory of Divine Love, 
and from the honors of sainthood, to petty adjustments 
of opinion and mortal measurements by one another. 
The Church for the present may have statement and 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



359 



counter-statement, indoctrination and recantation, sys- 
tems and system-destroyers, kingdom against kingdom, 
— cries of, " Lo! he is in the desert," and, " Lo! he is in 
the secret chambers," — only because the hour of unity is 
not yet. Ours are analysis, thesis, and antithesis ; the 
grand synthesis is of God. 

Any unity that councils shall consolidate will lack the 
harmonizing principle. Honest good-will may compact 
some comely covenant, but it will prove too bounded for 
the purposes of Providence. No preadjusted mould can 
coerce the elastic growths of that future Church for 
which no past can legislate and even the present can 
only watch and pray. In the freehold of the Christian 
inheritance, my friends, we do not hold by adverse title. 
Let us learn it, even before we see ourselves to be exter- 
nally and formally one ; and then the visible unity shall 
be ushered in. 

Meantime, brethren of all encampments in the Church 
Militant, — for militant she still is by destiny as against 
the world, but militant, if our hearts are right, she should 
no longer be as against herself, diverting toil from the 
perishing harvests to fratricidal strife, and beating sickles 
into swords, — what do we ? On the margin of that 
land of promise which eighteen centuries of providential 
history have been shaping for our heritage, we fall to hurl- 
ing poisoned javelins into our allies' enclosures. The 
strength that helpless humanity yearns to feel lifting up 
its wounded limbs, we waste in this fiendish folly. 

A truce ! a truce of God ! Slaves, sensualists, atheists, 
wait for redemption. Reluctant want, staggering under 
its unrighteous load, — rich idleness, sick with its slow 
consumption, — filth grovelling and generosity despair- 
ing, — woman, wronged and bewildered, straining her 



360 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 



patient ear to catch her Redeemer's consolation, — and 
we, the strong, the free, the wielders of opportunities, the 
openers and closers of gates, — we, that believing moth- 
ers have sung songs of Bethlehem to in our infancy, — 
we, that schools and universities have fostered in their 
bosoms, only that they might hand us on, in greater 
plenitude of grace, to the service of Christ and his 
Church, — we are tossing our petulant gauntlets from 
tent to tent ; not watchmen on the walls of Zion, yearn- 
ing to see eye to eye, but eaves-droppers at our neigh- 
bors' doors, eager to hear the jarring controversies of the 
sects, rather than the hymns of seraphs ! 

" "Worshipping the Father in spirit ; rejoicing in Christ 
Jesus; having no confidence in the flesh," — we are all 
" the circumcision." 

If you would find a church that is true, and alive from 
on high, you must seek one whose members serve each 
other by first serving Christ, whose law and motive and 
bond of concord are in their looking up into the same 
divine countenance, listening to the same heavenly voice, 
leaning together on the breast of the same Son of God. 

The unity begotten among sects by this looking to 
one undivided Lord will be spiritual, not mechanical. 
It will come, not by any sly foisting in among the sects 
of each other's phraseology, or any imitation of each 
other's measures, — not by cunning nor concealment; but 
by a candor that is transparent precisely because it is 
above partisanship and selfishness, — by a speech whose 
mightiest power lies in its sincerity, its unction, its evan- 
gelic necessity ; not, in short, by the will of man at all, 
but by so making the Saviour of our souls the centre, 
substance, and inspiration of the doctrine, that love for 
him sends every smaller passion out, and there is one- 
ness only because there is One. 



f 



SPIRITUAL HEIRSHIP. 361 

And so it has appeared how, in order to heirship in 
the fold, there is needed a doctrine of God, a doctrine of 
Christ, and a doctrine of the Spirit ; of worship, of re- 
demption, of the Church; of piety, of discipleship, of 
fraternity in the spiritual house. 

Over against these pillars of safety stand the beset- 
ting spiritual perils of the time, — all represented at last 
in that anti- Christian trinity, self-worship, self-deliver- 
ance, self-love. 

Let us be steadfast on the Corner-stone, and we will 
not suffer solicitude for our heritage. We shall realize 
the infinite endearment of that condescending promise, 
" Fear not, little flock ; it is your Father's good pleasure 
to give you the kingdom." We shall hold in our veins 
the blood of Israel. The conditions are unencumbered, 
and the title will belong as much to us as to the oldest 
hierarchy in the world. 

" For he is not a Jew that is one outwardly ; neither 
is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh ; but 
he is a Jew that is one inwardly ; and circumcision is of 
the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose 
praise is not of men, but of God. And we are the cir- 
cumcision, which worship the Father in spirit, and 
rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the 
flesh." 



31 



SERMON 



XXIII. 



THE EELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. * 

TO EE SPIRITUALLY-MINDED IS LIFE AND PEACE. — Kom. "viii. 6. 

The association called the "Boston Young Men's 
Christian Union" has already explained itself to the 
public. The causes that created it seem to have been 
both positive and negative. It was felt by the persons 
whose desires originated and whose thoughts shaped it, 
that there were young men enough in this city, seeking 
to guide their lives by Christian principles, to constitute 
an organized body, with the functions and furniture for 
united action in many ways. On the other hand, it was 
felt, with equal force, that the moral exposures besetting 
a business life in a centralized community, with metro- 
politan habits, required some systematic protection ; and 
especially that the young who come here, with no 
large experience of the peculiarly crafty and beguiling 
forms that iniquity assumes in such a place, fortified as 
iniquity often is in these attacks by homesickness on one 
side, and social proclivities on the other, might well 
impose some special painstaking on the right-minded, to 
surround the strangers with something like the warmth 



* Addressed to the " Boston Young Men's Christian Union/' December 
12, 1852. 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



363 



of a Christian household, or at least with the fellowships 
of a moral brotherhood. For there appeared to be no 
good reason why sin should come into these men's char- 
acters under the cheerful guise of virtue, when virtue 
itself might be equally welcome in its own. And then, 
when the time came for determining of what materials 
so broad and noble a design should compose its structure, 
generous spirits could, of course, decide the question 
but one way : it must be equally open to all men sin- 
cerely claiming a Christian belief and purpose, whatever 
other name they might superadd to the grand primitive 
one ; and so the society became a " Christian Union." 

At different points in the progress of its history thus 
far, these feelings that led to its formation have been 
laid open, in meetings and through the press, — suffi- 
ciently, I should think, to have secured a general under- 
standing of their scope and object. In discharging the 
office assigned me by the government of the association 
to-night, therefore, if I might find a subject which, while 
it should touch and cover those salient features of this 
plan that it is most desirable to notice, would also pos- 
sess some inherent unity and independent interest of its 
own, I should probably serve your wishes by handling it, 
more effectually than by limiting my discourse within 
the specific details of your movement. 

Such a subject has offered itself, I conceive, under the 
form of an inquiry into the characteristics and the power 
of a religion, which, in a better sense than the technical, 
theological one, is natural. A better sense, I say, mean- 
ing a simpler and more grateful one ; because, while the 
Natural Religion of theology signifies a scheme distinct 
from express revelation, and bereaved of Scripture sup- 
ports, this religion that is truly natural, of which I am to 



364 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



speak, is the gift of revelation, and rests its whole law, 
promise, and authority on the Bible. It will be for you 
to judge, as I attempt to identify it and describe its traits, 
whether its common reception into faith would not do 
more to satisfy the wants that young men are conscious 
of, more to strengthen and beautify their characters, 
more to save them from every species of danger, than 
any agency beside. 

It would be a poor affectation, however, to ignore that 
other view of the relation between nature and religion, 
which has written itself out into a distinct philosophy 
under the name of Naturalism. Denying the operation 
of any other causes than those that lie within the full 
grasp of the understanding, and are capable of being 
subjected to the definitions and analysis of science, in 
those grand religious facts, the inspiration of the Scrip- 
tures, the redemption of man by Christ, and the renewal 
of the soul into spiritual life, Naturalism, so called, 
opposes itself in direct issue against all the positions I 
intend to take, and all the Christianity I should wish to 
expound. It lies directly on my way into my theme, and 
is required by the terms I employ, to remark of this 
scheme, that its fundamental fallacy is in a radical mis- 
conception of the first fact in the case, religion. By its 
primal suggestion, in the first step it takes with us, relig- 
ion carries us over into contact with super-natural real- 
ities. Locating its objects in a sphere beyond nature, — 
the infinite, — all its revelations, to be authoritative, must, 
of course, proceed from a supernatural source, authen- 
ticating themselves by supernatural signs. To claim for 
a revelation pertaining to religion, therefore, that it be 
judged exclusively by the canons and criticisms of secular 
science, is in effect to begin by denying the premise, — 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



365 



denying that there is any such thing as religion. To 
proceed further, to argue that, since supernatural facts, 
the incarnation, and divine offices of the Spirit, are im- 
possible, or contrary to reason, the claim for them dis- 
credits Christianity, is to introduce such confusion of 
reasoning as amounts to impertinence. This is the 
logical offence of pure Rationalism, and, being irrational, 
is an offence against itself. It mistakes one science for 
another ; and, what is worse, turns the necessary condi- 
tion on which man can have religion at all, into an ar- 
gument against the only possible way of his getting it. 
Religion, by derivation, signifies what binds the human 
soul back to God, — finite to Infinite. Of course, super- 
naturalism inheres in it by its nature. In short, not to 
extend this introductory train of observation, it is no par- 
adox to say, that a supernatural religion is the only natu- 
ral one. So far from the fact that revelation involves 
mysteries acting as an embarrassment to it, it would be 
the blankest refutation of its pretences, and a destruction 
of its object, if it did not. Christianity comes to bridge 
the gulf between the creature, who is also a sinning 
creature, and the perfect God. That mediation, and the 
Mediator embodying it, must then of necessity contain 
elements, not human, but divine ; and the only interpre- 
tation of the New Testament that is natural, I contend, 
is that which accepts this truth, and commends it to the 
world's faith. 

Leaving this point, I shall go on to lay before you, in 
a direct form, what appear to me the chief characteristics 
and offices by which we shall recognize the religion that 
is at once natural and supernatural, thus bearing the 
brightest marks of truth and divinity ; supernatural, that 
is, in its design and introduction, but natural, or accord- 

31* 



366 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



ing to what we know of natural, in its manifestations in 
character y and its working in the world. 

What connects the subject with this occasion, is the 
circumstance that it seems to meet two of the common- 
est obstacles to a cordial adoption of the Christian stand- 
ing-place on the part of young men : one of these being 
disgust at the ^-natural phases that religion is often 
made to assume, in formal manners and unhuman affec- 
tations ; the other being a tendency to lax speculations, 
which flatter the pride of immature students, or those 
that only repeat the catchwords of such, so slipping into 
cant of another species, but which are finally found to 
cheat the soul under any real experience of life, and dis- 
satisfy the heart. 

I. The first mark I shall mention of the religion that 
in this high sense is natural, is this, — that it unites the 
culture of those qualities which men esteem for their 
manliness, with those that God requires for their sanc- 
tity, and so harmonizes nobleness of spirit with strictness 
of doctrine. 

Harmonizes them, — does not confound them. Honor, 
frankness, magnanimity, make no man a Christian dis- 
ciple. But then Christianity suffers no disciple to be 
treacherous, cunning, or mean. Honor, frankness, mag- 
nanimity, and the whole of that royal family, are the 
vigorous and graceful stock on which Christianity in- 
grafts its new and divine principle. Whatever moral 
beauty it does not create, Christianity claims and makes 
its own by adoption. These well-born virtues are or- 
phans in the world, till Christ shows them the Father. 
Something is greatly wanting in them, till they learn 
from Jesus a filial submission and a holy trust. Honor, 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



367 



frankness, magnanimity, may all consist with pride, or 
prayerless self-will, — that pride which Christianity pros- 
trates with its first word, when it cries, " Repent and be 
converted." Under that vicious alliance, they can never 
carry the soul forward into its ripest maturity. They 
stop at a half-way stage of the possible stature of human- 
ity. But separate them from that self-confidence, and 
you liberate them for a boundless progress. Hallow 
them by a Gospel penitence, and they rise into a new 
and an infinite dignity. They root themselves, then, in 
a firmer soil. They take a new guaranty of persever- 
ance from Him who is the same yesterday, to-day, and 
for ever. They put on the attribute of stability, borrow- 
ing it from the unshaken throne where they are now cen- 
tred and balanced. That cluster of radiant traits, which 
gain a uniform approval in the worldliest companies, 
which conform to the highest secular standard, and which 
are required in the code of gentlemen, never reach their 
loftiest growth till Faith crowns them with her unrivalled 
glory. On their own ground, then, and for their ultimate 
perfecting, these traits that men everywhere admire for 
their manliness must confess the sway of Religion, and be 
sanctified by her doctrines. 

There is no looser nor less philosophical heresy, than 
that Christianity does not bring into the world, and put 
into character, something peculiar to itself, — a charm 
unborrowed and inimitable. No instinctive amiabilities, 
nor generous propensities, can rival it ; no combination 
of Pagan merits can counterfeit it. A character truly 
touched with the Christian consecration carries upon it 
a certain spiritual sign, which even eyes of flesh take 
knowledge of. The real disciple, spite of his modesty, 
and ail the more infallibly because of his modesty, has 



368 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



the seal written on his forehead, to be known unmistak- 
ably, and read of all men. 

On the other hand, there is no brighter token that the 
Gospel came from the Builder of the worlds, than that it 
takes up into the scope of its own design, and makes a 
part of its own honor, whatever goodness has come to 
light in the world, outside of its conscious kingdom. The 
moment this all-comprehending and catholic law of life 
was revealed on earth in Jesus, all pre-existing morality 
seemed at once, by a natural necessity, to become an 
element in its strength. All foreign loveliness merged 
itself in that transcendent beauty. Name whatsoever 
virtue or aspiration you might, it had its niche provided 
for it in this Christian Pantheon of the new worship. By 
this wonderful assimilative energy, Christianity instantly 
appropriated to itself all the lawful forces of nature. It 
enthroned itself as the sovereign of the world's experience, 
claiming the universal empire of life by divine right. 
That reverential attempt of Christian art to represent the 
Saviour as the centre of original light, by encompassing 
his head with a glory radiating in every direction, might 
have its meaning inverted, and still be a true symbol; for 
all the rays of moral splendor, playing before like irreg- 
ular lightning along the horizon of history, suddenly con- 
verged, to shine with a concentrated and steady beam in 
the face of Jesus Christ. Some critic has said : " Paul, 
the Hebrew, had as fine theories of art as he had of soci- 
ety, if he had only had a chance of working them out." 
And this may be only a concrete way of saying, that 
Christianity, holding in itself the law of every human 
interest, is capable of blessing the science of universal 
beauty or order, as much as the actings of the will. So 
manifest has this been, that some writers have been led 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



369 



by it to exhibit Christianity as being nothing else than a 
compilation, or systematic compendium, of all the natu- 
ral religions ; the rules of the common moral sense of 
mankind codified; the residuum of all heathen instruc- 
tions ; a kind of pantheological eclecticism. The fallacy 
of that notion lies in overlooking those distinctive and 
attested supernatural facts, of the divine incarnation and 
the cross, with the doctrines they embody, — reconcilia- 
tion and forgiveness, — which, while they separate the 
Christian from some religions, as the complete from the 
partial, or the absolute from the relative, distinguish 
it from others as the redemptive from the educational. 
Other faiths propose to benefit man by advising him as 
to his behavior ; Christianity, by first saving him from his 
sins. Other teachers help the race ; Christ redeems it. 
But what was plausible in this theory was the fact, that 
Christianity does adopt, and welcome, and embrace, 
every trait that the intuition of right minds follows with 
its admiration. It asks no man to be a whit less manly, 
— less cordial in his fellowships, less cheerful in his tem- 
per, less companionable and genial in his relations to 
society, less penetrating in his sagacity, less noble in his 
manners, or less punctual in his industry. Does it not 
say, "Not slothful in business," as well as "fervent in 
spirit " ? You speak of sincerity, downrightness, or trans- 
parency: were not the sharpest rebukes that the Prophet 
of Nazareth ever pronounced — those awful " woes " that 
almost darken the page, and must have sounded like the 
fore-peals of the trumpet of eternal judgment — levelled 
at Pharisees and pretenders ? Did not Christ declare it 
the direct, uncompromising function of his truth to un- 
cover what is hid ? and is it not expressly made a condi- 
tion of that u wisdom which cometh from above," that it 



370 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



be without insincerity? Or you speak of knowledge, 
culture, science, as something worthy of man's esteem. 
What is Christianity but the fundamental science, — the 
science of man himself? Christianity knows men. Is 
it not written, and believed by you, of Christ himself, — 
whose person embodied Christianity, in whose thought it 
was organized, and in whose heart its blood throbbed, — 
that he " needed not that any should testify of man," and 
that u the Father showeth him all things that himself 
doeth"? You say there is another kind of intelligence 
that men lawfully respect, which is called shrewdness, or 
practical acquaintance with affairs. But is not that, too, 
provided for in the New Testament ? Do you suppose 
it was irrespective of then* practical experience among 
men, that Christ chose his first disciples, the foremost rep- 
resentatives of his truth, from among tax-gatherers, fish- 
ermen, tent-makers, and physicians ? Or will you look 
through literature or biography, or the marts of commerce, 
or the boards of the exchange, for a shrewder insight into 
all the ways and windings of human nature, than lurked 
in the sharp eye and wakeful perception of that leading 
Apostle, who turned the world upside down with his calm 
hand, carried his points with the dignitaries of provinces, 
foiled Felix and Agrippa, foresaw and forearmed himself 
against all that men could do to him, and in his Epistles 
tears open the cunningest wrappages of self-deception 
with his holy satire, — conquering Greek sophists and 
Roman disciplinarians with weapons out of their own 
quiver ? You instance courage; and is there not enough 
of that in that pioneering rank of the u noble army of 
martyrs," whom there was no dungeon dark enough to 
terrify, from Jerusalem to Rome, and who would not 
blench, nor even revile nor murmur, under all the scourges 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



371 



of Jewry, the whips of dainty Philippi, or the lion's teeth 
in the Roman amphitheatre ? Generosity, you say, is 
manly ; but who will so disown his own reason, as to 
confess he finds no generosity in that faith whose primal 
lesson is self-sacrifice, whose chosen badge and emblem 
is a cross, and which was taught and sealed by Him 
who gave his very life for the life of his followers ? You 
mention hospitality; and is not hospitality enjoined, with 
repetition and emphasis, by both Paul and Peter, as the 
attribute of saints, the grace of bishops, and the duty of 
all believers ? Of patriotism ; and who was he that 
cried, weeping, " O Jerusalem ! Jerusalem ! if thou hadst 
known how often I would have gathered thy children " ? 
Of the taste and love for the beautiful ; but whose finger 
was that which pointed most admiringly, as he discoursed, 
to the summer glories, the waving wheat and nodding 
lilies, the trees and lakes and gorgeous skies of Palestine ? 
— whose eye, that rested with sweetest satisfaction on 
that affluent and varied scenery ? — whose word, that 
blended the mystic openings of the sunrise with the 
light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, 
and so taught us how the relish of all that is sublime or 
lovely should rise at last and culminate in the worship of 
the Father, even as every manly and heroic quality is 
perfected only in the soul that is united to the Son ? 

So it has been in history. The religion of Jesus has 
realized its own promise, — completing not only Juda- 
ism, but all good yearnings and beginnings everywhere. 
It did not come to destroy, but to fulfil. It had its kindly 
word at the outset, even for those that, having not the 
law, did by nature the things contained in the law. And 
ever since, it has spread the benignant arms of its adop- 
tion over every worthy purpose, and every pure aspira- 



372 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



tion that will acknowledge its guardianship. Wherever 
the germs of lofty action unfold themselves, there the fos- 
tering hand of its discipline is present to train them. 
The sublimity of all honorable achievements, the valor of 
pure-hearted patriots, disinterested sufferings, the patience 
and fortitude and constancy that come out so grandly in 
fearful emergencies, — they are all as much the Gospel's 
as they are humanity's. You always see how much they 
lack, till they take on the sanctity of a conscious com- 
munion with the Christ ; till they are invested with the 
dignity of a regenerate devotion. But the instant they 
so submit themselves, they all render in their concordant 
homage to the Universal Lord ; and he calls them his 
own. They bring their honor and praise, wisdom and 
power, to " Him that sitteth on the throne," " whose right 
it is to reign" over them. Manliness enters into the 
composition of piety. All that the unperverted judgment 
of the world approves, the Gospel invites. What lends 
their real lustre to the memorable spots on the globe, 
what attracts the companies of genial and innocent fel- 
lowship, what makes the joy of light-hearted children, the 
usefulness of labor, the benefits of civilization, the hardi- 
hood and enterprise of traffic and invention, colonies and 
arts, what binds families and blesses homes, — these all 
are, in the last sense, yours only when you are Christian 
souls. Over every field where real goodness starts into 
life, Christianity extends its benediction. So what the 
world holds as its best, the Messiah accepts as his tribute. 
His Church has arms wider than the charity of the world. 
Providence realizes prophecy. " The sons of strangers 
build up thy walls. Thy gates shall be open continu- 
ally, that men may bring unto thee the forces of the 
Gentiles. The flocks of Kedar, — the dromedaries of 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



373 



Midian and Ephah ; these that fly as doves to their win- 
dows ; all they from Sheba shall come, bringing gold and 
incense ; the isles shall wait for thee ; the sons of them 
that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee, — for 
brass, gold ; and for iron, silver ; and for wood, brass ; 
and for stones, iron. The glory of Lebanon shall come 
unto thee, — the fir-tree, the pine-tree, and the box to- 
gether, — to beautify the place of the sanctuary." 

No doubt, there is such a thing as manliness without 
faith. But its defects are patent enough, even to the 
eyes of the faithless themselves. You cannot live with 
it very long without seeing its weak places. God kindles 
fires to prove us, along our mortal discipline, in whose 
burning heat it falls to pieces like a flimsy fabric ; such 
fires as require stuff of another tempering to come out 
refined, in vessels fit for immortal uses. Manliness 
without faith is not to be trusted ; for on Christian faith 
depends Christian principle ; and no other principle can 
stand all the solicitings of appetite and ambition. The 
other kind lurches away sometimes, leaving terrible 
chasms where some trusted pillar in the body politic, or 
body mercantile, went down. Manliness without devo- 
tion must ever want the highest attraction in character, 
which is self-renunciation, — the producer and ally of 
true simplicity. That comes only of a secret persuasion 
of infirmity ; and that comes only of the Gospel, show- 
ing the commandment and the violation, — the perfect 
law and the alienated life, — and spanning the gulf be- 
tween, by its blessed doctrine of reconciliation. Manli- 
ness without piety misses the profoundest and purest 
form of gratitude, because that exists only at the feeling 
of the Divine forgiveness for a sinful heart, — the gracious 
discharge from an infinite obligation producing the un- 

32 



374 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



speakable peace. In short, manliness without faith, at 
its best estate, is all frailty ; at its surest strength, it is 
un steadfast; at its fairest promise, it is treacherous ; at 
its fullest joy, it is empty. It may gain the world ; but, 
like the young man of the Evangelist, it turns away from 
Jesus, and in its great possessions finds no rest. 

And no doubt, on the other hand, there is such a thing 
as religion without manliness, — pietism, and not piety. 
This is as unnatural as the other. You not only rob 
religion, but you insult and betray it, if you present 
it, through your characters, implicated in narrow judg- 
ments, small sectarian manoeuvres, a barren brain, frigid 
sympathies, or a petty style of manners. Religion with- 
out manliness whines and crouches. It acts as if Provi- 
dence were a tyrant, the world a prison, and man a slave. 
Instead of holding its clear look up, with conscious and 
grateful dignity, to the light, and standing face to face 
with all the cheerful and solemn facts of life, and looking 
straight into the eyes of every creature, as faith gives it a 
supreme right to do, it goes to the church with a ghastly 
expression, or none, — creeps to the prayer-meeting ab- 
jectly, — is half afraid to own its cause, and shows its mea- 
gre mind by abusive and unillumined criticisms. It re- 
sorts to tricks for the building of a meeting-house, which 
the code of honor among unconverted men would reject 
from the shop, and settles a minister or equips a mis- 
sionary with a management too tortuous for the broker's 
counter. It makes common-sense cry out in despair, 
"Why cannot the disciples of Christ show the world speci- 
mens of human character, as broad in proportions, as free 
in outline, as magnanimous in temper, as sensible in 
practice, as appreciating in taste, as liberal in accomplish- 
ments, as they are superior by their celestial calling ? 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



375 



It is an indirect confession, I think, how consistent the 
strictest and most earnest system of doctrine is with the 
inward testimony of the heart, that a majority of young 
men who are thoughtful enough to fill a stated place in 
any sanctuary, when they choose their church, choose 
one where the administration is most decidedly and 
simply religious. I have known young men, themselves 
perhaps not yet fulfilling the demands of a Christian vo- 
cation, and certainly not openly avowing their Christian 
purposes, to say this : " When we go to a house of 
worship, we wish to see the same engagedness and ear- 
nestness there, that we see expended on a different class 
of objects all the week. We are suspicious of a style 
of preaching that is merely genteel, rhetorical, or philo- 
sophical. On Sunday we want sincerity, fact, and sub- 
stance, as much as in our business. We want life, — 
not bare intellectual life, but spiritual. There are books 
enough, lectures enough, science and poetry enough, else- 
where. When we go to church, we want to come into 
close contact with the very root and marrow of religion : 
otherwise it is no object. Once, the Sunday preaching 
was literature, poetry, art, lyceum, university, company, 
and all, to the New England people, — the grand intel- 
lectual stimulant and social facility : now, it is no such 
thing. We go to meeting to get glimpses of a Saviour, 
of heaven, and peace. Besides, we hate shams and half- 
beliefs in anything, — politics or prayers. If religion is 
what you pretend, give us the solid thing, no dilution nor 
fancy-work. We hold you to your honest word. We 
say, as the great English captain and disciplinarian, late- 
ly dead, said to the delicate young clergyman, who un- 
dertook to win from him an assent to some lax construc- 
tion of the Gospel errand, ' Follow your orders.' We 



376 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



say, as another man, one of the broadest intellects of our 
Western continent, more lately gone, said, 1 Let clergy- 
men preach more to individuals, and less to the crowd ; 
let them say, " The Judge standeth before the door " ; 
make it a personal matter ' ; for, even when we do not 
obey, something in us makes us choose to hear the naked 
and wakening truth." 

" Why do you go," it was asked of one of our mer- 
chants' clerks, " to a church where a creed is embraced 
in which you do not believe ? " " Because," he replied, 
" I find religion there presented as a concern — a 
pressing, intimate, exigent concern — of the soul : repent- 
ance, faith, newness of life, and Christ crucified, are 
preached to me." It seems to me he was right. The 
religion that is really natural harmonizes nobleness and 
manliness of spirit with strictness of doctrine. 

II. In the second place, the religion that is natural 
unites an open confession of faith with the hiding of its 
inward power, and so strikes a just balance between the 
two faulty extremes of reserve on the one side, and hy- 
pocrisy on the other. 

We have in our community, first, a class that would 
supersede the anxiety to be Christians, by vigorously and 
continually saying that they are ; a class that w^ould 
rather let iniquity hide under the altar, than thin the 
crowd that bend decently before it ; and that hold up no 
other sign to distinguish a disciple from an unbeliever, 
than the subscription to a covenant. Out of that class 
comes hypocrisy. Opposite to these are the timid minds 
that shrink honestly from all church ties, and, with hearts 
tender to holy impressions, miss both inward complete- 
ness and their outward efficiency, by keeping aloof from 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



377 



church-fellowship. Theirs is a wrong-headed reserve. 
But between both these stands a larger class than either, 
excusing their non-profession by the inconsistency of 
false professors, but taking license for a low standard of 
life from the same example ; scoffing at the former, who 
profess without practice, and practising with the latter, 
only in not professing ; telling you they can be just as 
holy men out of the Church as in, but evidently more 
careful to be out of the Church than to be holy men. 
Clear of these alien elements, it is the problem of Chris- 
tianity to combine a Church of believers, who shall be 
both doers and professors of the word of life. 

And to that end, Christianity insists, first of all, on a 
real faith. Whatever else it has or lacks, the soul, to be 
saved, must obey an honest purpose. Pretence and 
falsehood must be stripped off it. It must believe with 
the affections, heartily. With the heart man believeth 
unto salvation, before confession is made with the mouth. 
In all departments of life, sincerity is the salt that saves 
men from the disgrace of acted lies. Men of the world, 
legislating only for mutual convenience, cannot be mis- 
taken in making downright and unpretending reality the 
foremost command in their statute-book. To get rid of 
the semblance of goodness where goodness is not, is as 
important to the purity of the Church, or the acceptance 
of a soul before the Judge of hearts, as to get rid of sin 
where sin is. In fact, the pretence is sin. Get the con- 
viction, which is the fountain, and it will furrow out a 
channel, and fill it with a stream. Get the new life, the 
love of God, and it will shape a body as the juices in the 
germ shape the tree. Have something to say, and the 
Everlasting Mind will give you, as well as the Apostles, in 
that day and hour, how ye ought to say it. It is useless 
32 * 



378 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



for a man to tell you " his heart is right with God, if you 
see his hand feeling in his neighbor's pocket," or clutch- 
ing at unfair advantages in the market, or devouring 
widows' houses ; subscribing to philanthropic projects 
and swindling contracts on alternate days ; or reaching 
forth to the bread and wine of Christ's table to-day, and 
fingering some dishonest bribe in office to-morrow. You 
will hardly trust the tongue that swears an oath of divine 
allegiance when it is good-natured, but a profane one in 
a passion ; nor the lips that repeat formal prayers in the 
pew, and babble scandal in the parlor. You will not be 
satisfied that men should declaim against iniquities 
which they happen never to be tempted by ; nor that 
they should come, with late professions, limping, maimed, 
and sickly sacrifices, such as even Hebrew priests refused, 
after the fire in the blood of youth has cooled, and the 
indulged appetites have burnt out through satiety, to 
offer God a wreck wasted in the service of his enemies. 
For " some," says South, " hope to be saved by shedding 
a few insipid tears, and uttering a few hard words 
against those sins which they have no other controversy 
with, but that they were so unkind as to leave the sinner 
before he was willing to leave them." So that, after all, 
the fundamental test of profession is sincerity of faith, 
and the test of sincerity of faith is righteousness. To 
be natural, religion must be real. For " in all natural 
productions," from cedar to hyssop, from the sun shining 
in his strength to the dullest lump of clay, " there is no 
hypocrisy." 

But then, Christianity as naturally requires confession. 
The excuses by which men, and none more than young 
men, apologize for not cordially espousing Church rela- 
tions, are for the most part evasions, and so involve some 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 379 



obliquity, as uncandid, possibly, as the unworthy profes- 
sor's. John Foster suggests that the religious loquacity 
of incompetent pretenders may be a kind of compensa- 
tory judgment on those believers who might honestly 
testify for the Gospel, but refuse. Is it not natural to 
show which side you are on ? Is not that counted the 
way of fearlessness, of frankness, of independence, in 
your common relations, — in politics, in local questions, 
in measures of social change ? There is a greater issue 
pending before you, nay, within you ; and what makes 
neutrality especially respectable there ? The world over, 
and pre-eminently in a city like this, two gigantic forces, 
under two leaders, claim your adhesion : these two are 
contrary, the one to the other, and there is no thud. 
Christ and his Church are one ; Mammon and worldly 
good are the other. You must choose which, in you, 
shall be supreme ; it is a providential necessity laid upon 
you ; nay, you have chosen, and do literally choose every 
hour, anew. To be uncommitted is to be on the side 
that is not God's. 

We are not nearly enough in the habit of treating re- 
ligion as a cause, and ourselves as soldiers, whose honor 
is bound up in it, our all at stake in it. "Who is on the 
Lord's side ? is a question that rings up and down our 
streets eternally, and in voices more solemn than brave 
Xavier's when he cried it through the cities of the East ; 
for we are nominally Christians, and so in a position to 
do Christ more discredit infinitely than heathenism ever 
could. It is of the utmost consequence to every young 
man's singleness of heart, saying nothing , of his future 
welfare, to have this choice settled. Till then he is per- 
petually compromised. We treat religion as if it were 
an isolated idea in every heart, and not a unity, a king- 



380 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



dom, a cause, which it certainly is if the New Testament 
is true. Our excessive individualism wrongs it. It is 
an organization, it is a church, it is something we have 
to enter into, and fight for, and abide by. 

Nominally we are Christians, and thereby hangs an 
obligation. It may be that you, with all your contempt 
for insincerity, are wearing a false name, and acting a 
part as essentially Pharisaic as if you were at once a 
preacher and a sceptic, or a deacon and a miser. Relig- 
ion does not ask to be complimented and bowed to, on 
occasions. It is not honored in its own spirit by any 
formal attention to its technical services, — its dress and 
ritual, — divorced from a hearty submission to its interior 
control ; nor by any ball-room compliments paid to its 
respectability as an institution, unsupported by obedience 
to its personal behests. These things are both discour- 
teous and dishonest. When we venture to speak ap- 
provingly of a system of science, integrity demands of 
us to shape our speech by its own definitions. We must 
take it for what it is, and not for something else that our 
wilful constructions might put instead of it. If you join 
in that universal and swelling confession which these 
eighteen centuries have been accumulating, you are 
held to a personal consistency. Christianity is afraid of 
no scrutiny. It invites the boldest handling. It wants 
no fine things said of it, out of etiquette. It throws its 
evidences into the light, and stands on the facts. Like 
the divine Person that embodies it, it says : " Come, reach 
hither thy finger, and thrust it into my hand ; and reach 
hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side ; be not faith- 
less, but believing : and yet deny me, if you will, rather 
than heartlessly assent ; for open foes are better than 
treacherous followers." In a thousand ways you all pro- 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



381 



fess to be a Christian people : why not, then, profess it 
in the one plainest and directest way ? If we will not 
own the kingdom of heaven, how is the kingdom of 
heaven to own us ? 

Another consideration ought not to be passed over. 
Society, in its inequalities and injustices, is constantly 
presenting a necessity for reforms. Private sins settle 
together, and get organized into gigantic forces. To re- 
sist the collective evil, a collective sanctity is wanting. 
That is a Church. Now, if the Church ever enacts the 
public shame of proving faithless to this sublime privi- 
lege, leaving the great moral reformations to be taken in 
hand by well-disposed persons standing outside of the 
Church, then, instead of forsaking or avoiding the Church, 
let your disapproval rather draw you into it ; enlist your 
disinterested energies under its standard. Working ac- 
cording to that providential way, you will work with ten- 
fold greater success. Put your reforming zeal, then, in- 
side the Church, where it is too much wanted. Revive 
its ancient primitive martyr-spirit. Warm it with your 
prayers, expand it by your charity. Cast into it all of 
spiritual strength and hope you hold, and you shall both 
save yourself, and build up truth, liberty, and love, beat- 
ing down intemperance, war, licentiousness, and slavery. 

So in all other workings, where the Church of Christ 
has suffered foreign devices to outwit or outdo its appro- 
priate business. This Young Men's Christian Union 
was not formed to compete with that divine body, nor 
to supersede it, nor to comfort any of its own members 
with the feeling that they need not belong to it. The 
right office of your association will be fulfilled only as it 
leads more and more of you to open recognitions of 
faith, and active participation in the parishes. Instead 



382 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



of carping at the faults you see there, enter and remedy 
them. If you find God's houses fenced about with an 
illiberal policy, — their pew-doors locked, literally with 
bolts, or virtually with exorbitant taxation, imposed to 
support luxurious appointments, and give worship a 
stylish equipage, — then do not stand complaining ; but 
come into the active care of these parish economics, 
lifting them gradually to the level of your juster, equaliz- 
ing ideas. Take the meeting-houses up in your arms, 
and do with them as you will. The body of men before 
me, consecrated and baptized with the Holy Spirit, 
might revolutionize the whole ecclesiastical fashion in 
twenty days. Only let it be done out of the propelling 
energy of faith, and not from an ambitious, conceited, or 
sectarian policy. 

We all have our creeds, and, in spite of ourselves, we 
profess them ; — the creed of fashion ; the creed of appe- 
tite ; the creed of a selfish expediency ; the creed of a 
sect ; the creed of indifference, which is as irreligious 
and as bigoted in its way as any other ; or the creed of 
eternal right and gospel faith. Conduct is the great pro- 
fession. Behavior is the perpetual revealing of us. A 
man's doctrines flow from his ringers' ends, and stand 
out in his doings. What he may say is not his chief 
profession, but how he acts. Character lets out the se- 
cret of his belief ; what he does tells what he is. He 
has " put on the Lord Jesus Christ," when he has u Christ 
formed within him." His profession is as natural as the 
pulse in his veins. The good man makes profession of 
his goodness, by simply being good ; but the Christian 
man will not forget that he is not wholly good till he has 
joined himself to Christ's body. He publishes his adhe- 
sion as spontaneously as Nature publishes her laws, — as 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



383 



the sun its light, — as the rose its sweetness ; — by being 
steadfast ; by shining ; by fragrant charities. It costs a 
graceful elm no spasm to paint a graceful image on our 
eye, and the sea spreads its mysterious arms around the 
hemispheres without vanity. They make their nature 
known by silently keeping its laws. And because the 
Christian soul is made to be a conscious member in a 
living organism or church, it keeps its own high law only 
by being there. Religion belongs in the heart-beat of a 
man's affections, and the breath of his daily desire : till 
it has so possessed him, it is a small matter that he 
keeps its effigy as a connoisseur keeps his marble Apollo, 
— on the outskirts of his practical fortunes. The true 
hospitality takes it to the heart. But when the heart 
has taken it in, it will not lock it there, and make it a 
prisoner. It must go abroad again, for the blessing of 
man and the praise of God. It will put its owner into 
the Church, not to show himself, but that he may the bet- 
ter become one with his brethren, and their common head. 
So does the religion that is natural unite the public con- 
fession of it with the hiding of its inward power. 

As has been wisely remarked by Morell, " The prop- 
er profession of Christianity is its practice ; and, were 
that practice based upon an elevated idea of Chris- 
tian duty, the inquiry as to a man's profession would be 
as much out of place as the inquiry respecting a How- 
ard, whether he professed a love for humanity ! " 

III. Thirdly, the religion that is natural unites the 
exercise of a scrupulous conscience with the sentiments 
of devotion ; so reconciling morality and piety. Indeed, 
the divorce of these two is so wwnatural, that we can ac- 
count for it only on the score of some terrible infirmity, 



384 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



either in the heart or the will, — the affectional or the 
executive part of us. How else could that twofold com- 
mand, wedded by the word of Christ, summing up the 
ethics and the worship of earth and heaven, — Love 
God and love man, — ever have been wrenched apart ? 
Morality loses its finest quality, its inspiration, its aroma, 
its constancy, its divine peace, for want of prayer ; and 
piety misses its effective force as a producer of right- 
eousness, because the link is lost between the closet and 
the market. 

In one of the bright books of the day, I find a coura- 
geous and impulsive young English fox-hunter saying 
to a clerical Oxford cousin : " I feel that the exercise of 
freedom, activity, foresight, daring, independent self-de- 
termination, even in a few minutes' burst across country, 
strengthens me in mind as well as in body. It sweeps 
away the web of self-consciousness. As for bad com- 
pany, when those that have renounced the world give up 
speculating in the stocks, you may quote pious people's 
opinions. We fox-hunters see that the ' religious world ' 
is much like the 4 great world,' and the 6 sporting world,' 
and the ' literary world ' ; and that, because this happens 
to be a money-making country, and money-making is 
an effeminate pursuit, therefore all sedentary sins, like 
covetousness, slander, bigotry, and self-conceit, are to 
be plastered over, while the more masculine vices are 
hunted down by your cold-blooded religionists. Be sure 
that, as long as you make piety a synonyme for this 
weak morality, you will never convert me, nor any other 
good sportsman." 

Now, Christianity ought not to be afraid to hear the 
thoughts that are working in young men's brains speak 
out with just this candor. True Christianity will not be 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



385 



afraid, though she may regret the narrow premises, the 
dim reasoning, and the superficial conclusions, which 
make the selfishness of unscrupulous worshippers an ex- 
cuse for despising the religion of the New Testament. 
Her advocates and ministers may learn something from 
it, and be able to take a more intelligent and forcible 
attitude for it. They may learn from it that any relig- 
ious ardors are, in the long run, maniacal and delusive, 
which do not work themselves out straightway into all 
parts of life. They may learn that the proud friends and 
self-styled elect of the Church may be its most ruinous 
traitors. They may learn that precisely the religious 
administration which the world needs now is one that 
never ceases to insist on a consistent manifestation of 
faith, through works that bless and ennoble humanity. 

If I might venture to define what is the great mischief 
of the merely moral or conscience-system of life, I should 
say that it excludes the most powerful principle of dis- 
interested action, which is a grateful trust in a love flow- 
ing infinitely from God, through Christ and his cross. 
Instead of this, it takes the iron rule of law or command. 
Of course, on that ground, its only standard and hope of 
acceptance or success is in the more or less merit which 
comes of more or less obedience to that law. But, at 
this point, the soul, looking at the law, is awe-struck 
to find it a perfect law, coming from a perfect author, 
allowing for no sin, and nowhere offering the least en- 
couragement to a half-obedience. At the same moment, 
it discovers, with dismay, that, owing to inherent pro- 
pensities and passions, this obedience never was nor is 
likely to be perfect. Where is it, then ? Merit is out 
of the question. The utmost duty falls short, and the 
servant is unprofitable at best. One of two things foJ- 

33 



386 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



lows : this man must either deny to God his perfection 
of purity, and to the law its binding authority, so as to 
make room for his short-comings ; or else he must sink 
into utter despair, because they do nothing but condemn 
him. This would seem to be the result of the conscience 
system alone, without the mediatorship, and its doctrines 
of reconciliation, in Christ. It leaves man either without 
reverence or without peace, or both. 

Then it engenders a poor habit of continual self-refer- 
ence, self-measurement, and self-centralization, instead of 
taking the soul up above itself, giving it an object there 
to live for, in gratitude and love. It diseases us with 
"that morbid self-consciousness and lust of praise," so 
common among our Christians even ; of which it has 
been wisely said, " that God prepares for it," in his own 
way and time, " with all his truly elect, a bitter cure." 
It sets consciousness above revelation, as a light to the 
mysteries of our inner life ; and that " consciousness is a 
dim candle over a deep mine." The aspiration after the 
Perfect, in all noble natures, is the mightiest hunger of 
the heart. But if no blessed promise of forgiveness is to 
come by faith, and comfort its failures, all its yearnings 
are tortures, and it is only the mightiest tormentor of the 
heart. What is needful but the prayers of faith, second- 
ing the intercessions of a Church and a Mediator, to bear 
it up above these sad distractions, and rest it in the peace 
of God ? 

But, then, just there you see how the same habit, in 
another stage, invades the domain of prayer itself, and 
enfeebles its peculiar energy, with the strange theory, 
never gained from Scripture certainly, that prayer is, after 
all, another name for work, or behaving morally, — that 
there is no veritable asking and receiving in it, as Jesus 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



387 



plainly declares, but that we are to go through the cere- 
mony of praying to God just as if there were a God hear- 
ing us and answering, only because, by imposing on our- 
selves that trick, we excite our own resolution, climb into 
a purer mood, and gain some favors from the natural laws; 

— this, instead of praying such honest prayers as children 
bring to their parents, doubting nothing, and as real be- 
lievers have known to be answered ever since belief was, 

— such prayers as the Bible prays for us. What faith 
asks, again, therefore, is that our very prayers themselves 
shall be re-christianized, and a literal communion between 
earth and heaven be re-opened. 

Inverting now the direction of our search, we look for 
morality. James, with his Epistle for godly conduct, 
must follow Paul with his fervent enthusiasms of devo- 
tion. Life is a vineyard. Its business is a task. "We 
are set down in a field white already to harvest. Hu- 
manity has wrongs to be righted, and oppressions to be 
lifted off. Bargains are to be made immaculate. Lusts 
are to be quenched. Selfishness is to be softened. In a 
word, faith is to bear fruit an hundred-fold, and piety to 
lead a moral life. Otherwise, the whole head of faith is 
sick, and the whole heart of piety is faint. 

This every-day, familiar, working religion, the religion 
of little things, is Christianity. To Jesus, the lily grow- 
ing in the shadow of Gerizim was as sacred as the tem- 
ple blazing in the splendor of Mount Moriah, and the 
widow's mite and humility worthy as Joseph's courage 
and fortune. You have heard of the Turkish piety that 
will carefully put aside all fragments of paper, lest the 
name of God, written on them by chance, should be trod- 
den on and profaned. Christian reverence will gather 
up the scraps of time and opportunity, because on them 



388 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



all is certainly stamped the law of religious accountabil- 
ity. The dyer's hand, they say, is subdued to the thing 
it works in ; but so, morally, is every man's. Suppose 
you tell a friend, who comes to be your guest, that you 
will set apart one house that shall hold him locked up, 
where you will meet him one hour in the week, and there 
pay him professions of extravagant esteem ; but you will 
not allow him in your home, your shop, or your recrea- 
tions. That is the hospitality which many of us show 
to religion. Neither devotion nor conscience will reach 
its natural growth so. Character — joint fruit of piety 
and morality, prayer and work — is the glory of the 
world ; and only that holiness has immortality. 

IV. My fourth and final position is this : — The relig- 
ion that is natural unites a supreme zeal for evangelical 
belief with the largest Christian catholicity, and so blends 
fidelity with charity. 

My meaning is, that religious toleration ought not to 
stand indebted for its prevalence to religious indifference. 
A part of the " Christian liberty " of which our modern 
age boasts, may be merely a liberty, or license, not to be 
Christian. Some of our powers, both civil and ecclesias- 
tical, care too little, possibly, about any faith, to oppress 
any. The reign of true charity can never be inaugurated 
on earth by discrowning zeal. 

Zeal any vital and conquering system must have. It 
is one of the manliest and mightiest attributes of our na- 
ture. To Christian character it is what heat is to the 
sun. Now, zeal implies convictions ; not loose, vague, 
slippery notions, so carelessly held as to breed unconcern, 
or so falsely spiritual as to melt away before the eye, into 
thin, vapory generalities ; but convictions, — definite, de- 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 389 

cided, special. These are the things that beget an hon- 
est zeal. Men do not toil, and sweat, and lay down for- 
tune and fame for the sake of cloudy abstractions ; nor 
do martyrs go to the axe and fire for the sake of being 
" a pretty good sort of men for the most part," or doing 
about right in general. I have already spoken of the 
relish strong minds have for strong doctrine. "When you 
go to church only to hear it preached to you, that self-cul- 
tivation is all you want ; that sin is an old-fashioned, 
obsolete phantom ; that, having got rid of the notion of 
a devil, theology has now only to get rid of the anxiety 
about his works ; that the difference between converted 
and unconverted is only the difference between more and 
less of manhood, or personal distinction ; that retribution 
is soft or a nullity, and divine justice a figure of speech, 
and intuition the grand guide, and passion the voice of 
Divinity, or dying penitence an atonement for a vile life, 
or the redemptive work an easy acquittal and substitute 
for our own, — then you feel, I have no doubt, that you 
have been debauched by the preaching. If you are a 
dissipated and profligate man yourself, you will yet de- 
spise the minister for flattery and falsehood, who tells 
you the dissipated and profligate man is nothing but an 
immature style of man, a little behind his regenerate 
neighbor on the same road. You know that Christianity 
divides the world into two sorts of men. If you are a 
sinner, of any shape, something in you will extort your 
consent when you are told that God hates sin. You 
know that, after a sinful life, the religion that cries, " Be 
born again," is the most natural religion, — that guilt in- 
volves the peril of perdition, — that repentance is the only 
rescue, faith in Christ Jesus the only blessedness, and 
righteousness, springing therefrom, the only salvation. 

33* 



390 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



It is a striking etymological confirmation of the tie that 
connects strict believing with strict living, that in the his- 
tory of language the term "libertine" was first applied 
to lax or sceptical speculations, but came, in process of 
time, to signify corrupt morals. It will be only an irre- 
ligious liberality that argues for charity by striking out 
the pillars of faith ; which would be to the contentious 
sects in the Church much like producing harmony among 
the angry inmates of a house by tearing away the foun- 
dation. 

And yet, that these contentious sects be pacified, the 
growing Christian consciousness of the age feels to be 
one of the very foremost wants of the Church. The time 
has come, and is coming more perfectly each day, when 
the extinction of sectarian bigotry and intolerance is made 
necessary, not only to the practical power and consistency 
of the Christian religion itself, but to the satisfaction of 
Christian men as they are. Your own title and schedule 
as an association give an intimation that you have caught 
the foreshining of that day-spring ; and, as if you recog- 
nized this as among the chief desiderata in rational piety, 
you have called yourselves a Christian Union. 

The pressing question, now, therefore, respects the 
mode of this Union, or how a better state of mutual for- 
bearance is to be brought about. Not, in the name of 
all that is natural, in the first place, by any sacrifice of 
convictions. We must not think to heal our quarrels by 
crucifying our Lord. Obtain uniformity by the least 
abandonment of doctrines which you really believe, and 
it is a uniformity not worth having; it is a league of 
death ; you have destroyed the greater for the less. The 
truth as it is in Jesus, first ; then the " seeing eye to eye." 
The Unitarian cannot say to the Trinitarian, " Give up 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



391 



your faith in Christ's absolute Deity, and I will give up 
my faith in man's natural purity ; and then come, and 
let us agree." The Protestant cannot say to the Roman- 
ist, " Try to stretch your belief so as to embrace a half of 
the doctrine of justification by faith, and I will try to 
stretch mine so as to take in half of your absolution by 
sacraments ; and so we will be brethren." All this, in 
every degree of it, is artificial, false, infidel. It is palter- 
ing with the most sacred verities, and a denial of the ever- 
lasting fact. Systems of theology are not to be patched 
and accommodated, like blocks of wood, by paring off 
here, and adding on there ; raising one side, and lower- 
ing another. Every honest spirit revolts instantly at the 
bare conception, and there is no need to argue upon it. 
If unity could come only in that compromising way, 
every believing man would cry out, " Then, in Christ's 
name, let the Church stand split to the end of days, and 
the Saviour's prayer, 4 that they all may be one,' be un- 
fulfilled for ever." 

At the extreme opposite to this mistake is the more 
common one, held by each of the sects, that, whenever 
the present religious hostilities cease, that event will be 
due to the perfect and universal triumph of its own 
creed ; the world swinging round exactly on to its own 
platform. This notion seems as contracted as the other 
one was lax. It is undoubtedly true, that to himself 
every man's convictions must for the present appear to 
be right ; otherwise they are no longer convictions. The 
moment he ceases to have faith in his views, he must 
dismiss them, or hold them in suspense ; and in his 
efforts to spread or propagate the Gospel, he must seek to 
propagate his own view of what the Gospel is, and not 
another man's ; that is, what is truth to him. So, in shap- 



392 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



ing to himself an idea of the perfect doctrine that will 
organize a united church, he cannot distinctly conceive 
what other it shall be than the one he now believes to be 
true. All these are plain propositions. But this, surely, 
is not the same as his saying that God cannot, or will 
not, disclose to another age what he has hidden from 
this. You can be sincere and consistent in your own 
belief, without denying human progression. You can 
suppose the faith of the future will, in many things, 
differ from your own, and yet be true, though you cannot 
distinctly conceive how. Of course, nothing is plainer 
than that this hope, on the part of the sects, each one by 
itself, that its own precise creed shall finally prevail, to 
the total overthrow of all the rest, must be futile ; for, of 
fifty different things, each one cannot be substituted for 
all the rest at the same time. Ought not the absurdity 
of this expectation to teach us denominational modesty, 
— teach us to be less confident and dogmatical as 1 to 
those tenets wherein we differ, — teach us to hold a less 
repellent attitude towards each other, as to all the less 
essential peculiarities of form, polity, and mere intellect- 
ual opinions ? 

Essential, — that is the word on which all hinges. 
Something is essential. Suppose now that, ceasing to 
look at one another, to compare themselves with one 
another, to criticise one another, and to contend with 
one another, the sects turn and look only to Him who is 
the acknowledged Head of all. Suppose they should 
become so intent in their personal affection and devotion 
to him, as to pass over their various interpretations of 
terms without dispute ; so devoutly grateful to see the 
Father thus manifested in the flesh, as to lose their in- 
terest in wordy controversies ; so ardent in their worship, 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



393 



as to be raised out of concern for sectarian numbers ; so 
absorbed in the deep conviction of unworthiness, while 
they look on the moving spectacle of the cross, and 
see a pure Redeemer suffering to reconcile them to the 
Heaven they have deserted, as to forget the poor interests 
of party pride, — then would it not begin to be clear as 
noon to them all, just as far as they should do this, what 
the essential is ? 6t Be ye reconciled to God " : that is 
the essential. Put this state of coldness, of indifference, 
of spiritual torpor and carelessness, or of positive alien- 
ation between yourself and him, — put it to an end. 
Come into a free and peaceful harmony of will with 
him. Let penitence win his forgiveness ; let confession 
secure his favor ; let prayers — such prayers as swell and 
move the whole heart — scatter your doubts; let faith 
give you constancy, and practical righteousness place 
your feet on solid rock. All this is of the heart, not of 
the brain. It comes by way of the conscience and affec- 
tions, not by outward form or creed. It is a personal 
experience, and not a sectarian calculation. Believers 
will be reconciled to one another just so fast and so far 
as they will heed Paul's entreaty, beseeching them in 
Christ's stead to be first reconciled to God. 

You will see, from this exposition, that I look for the 
Christian concord, of which I have spoken as an object 
very precious to good men's hopes, not as coming by the 
neglect of Christ's doctrine, nor by dogmatic obstinacy ; 
not by paring down creeds to make them fit, nor by one 
sect overriding and swallowing all others ; but by going 
down so deep into all the affecting and powerful realities 
belonging to the soul's reconciliation to God in Christ 
Jesus, that every earnest believer's heart shall be found 
meeting its fellow there, all beating in friendly unison, 



394 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



and all resting in the Divine Love. Or, to vary the 
image, Christian unity is to come, not by attempts to 
concoct a mental conformity with ingenious contrivance, 
working on a human level; but by letting the soul be 
taken up into that lofty region of warm devotion, of holy 
trust, of heavenly communion, where it loses sight of the 
little boundary lines that mark off sect from sect ; and 
where it forgets alienations by ascending far above them 
towards the peace of God. " If ye then," says the grand 
exhortation of the Apostle, — " if ye then be risen with 
Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ 
sitteth on the right hand of God. For your life is hid 
with Christ in God." 

Nothing is plainer in prophecy, than that each of the 
existing sects has, in its form of faith, some element to 
contribute to that Perfect Church, or visible Body of 
Christ, which the future is to realize. It is very impres- 
sive, and it ought to inspire us with reverence for the 
methods of the Divine Providence, to see how every 
separate denomination is thus put out to school by itself, 
fashioned into a peculiar form, nurtured to a peculiar 
life, qualified for a peculiar task ; and then, when their 
several ideas are developed, how they are to be brought 
together by the attractions of the Spirit, and their dis- 
tinctive qualities melted into one homogeneous whole. 
We stand at the preparatory or transition point, in this 
process. Protestantism has broken up the old false and 
formal unity, where the letter had overborne the spirit, 
and has installed the new state of divided parties, — a 
necessary stage on the way to final peace and purity. 
For, remember, purity is as precious to God as peace. 
There is a false kind of peace ; such as was before 
Luther, — the peace of absolutism and tyranny; such 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



395 



as may be again, — the peace of worldly stagnation and 
religious unconcern. The only union that can satisfy 
the Almighty, or bless mankind, is where peace stands 
in agreement with wholesome activity of mind, a ruling 
love of truth, and holiness of life. It is to accomplish 
that, that we are passed through all this stir of inquiry 
and agitation of opinions, incidental to a Protestant age. 
What it most concerns us to observe, while in it, is not 
to let difference pass into hostility, variety run into sec- 
tarianism, individuality shrivel into dogmatism, and com- 
parisons of doctrine be deformed by a dishonorable pros- 
elytism, or a wicked intolerance. And equally does it 
concern us not to continue divided after the time has 
fairly come for us to be one, nor maintain opposing or- 
ganizations when their providential function has ceased, 
and their historical significance been taken up into a 
more comprehensive order. This will be our danger, 
just as far as we scorn any indications of a growing 
religious harmony, or persist in pushing party projects 
when it is plain we can render God better service by act- 
ing just as if parties were abolished, or had never been. 

You all know that, a few years ago, certain patriotic 
venerators of the majestic character of Washington de- 
vised a new offering to his greatness, in a national monu- 
ment, to be composed, in part, of stones contributed by 
the several States of the Union which his wisdom and 
heroism founded. These several communities have 
brought their blocks to that grand pile, each carving 
some inscription befitting its own history or genius, or 
expressing the dominant local sentiment. On the faces 
of these tablets, products of quarries scattered over a 
country so broad, the eye of the future will read the 
characters of those ideas which the discipline of Ameri- 



396 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



can history has wrought into the minds of the people, 
their copy stamped on these durable pages, dedicated to 
the common founder and leader. But the best monu- 
ment of our divine deliverance is the body of living dis- 
ciples. Ages are its builders. Faith is its corner-stone. 
Love is the artist that shapes its symmetry, and forms 
the unity of the design. For that " growing temple," as 
the Apostle fitly calls it, every sincere and thoughtful sect 
brings in its hands some needed contribution, the result 
of its own single experience, carved with a thought 
which nothing but the wisdom born of its own special 
life could have inspired. And, as even the savage In- 
dian hordes, whose only blessing from this new civiliza- 
tion has been exile, oppression, and temptation, with a 
touching forgiveness quite redeeming in their barbarian 
natures, have added in their votive stone to commemo- 
rate the political father of the nation ; so, I cannot help 
believing, those persecuted and outcast tribes of heathens, 
whom Pharisaic judgments now rank as beyond the pale 
of the circumcision, will be found at last to deliver in 
some tribute, more acceptable than that of the Pharisees 
themselves, to the Building of the impartial Lord, in 
whom there is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, 
barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free. 

America was not discovered to be merely a magnifi- 
cent workshop for enterprise, nor a camp for political 
parties, nor even a theatre for the play of civil liberty. 
God meant it for a nursery of believing and valiant souls, 
— the home of a sacred brotherhood, — a church of his 
living praise. It becomes us to see to it, so far as our 
individual life and confession will achieve or further it, 
that here his pure word and will shall have free course, 
run, and be glorified. 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



397 



There is a deeper wisdom awaiting the unfolding of 
God's plans than has yet got itself taught in our univer- 
sities ; a more perfect social order than is commanded 
by any statute-book, or enforced by any government ; a 
truer theology than is written in any creed or catechism. 
It is well to live and labor under these cheerful expecta- 
tions ; for we shall live more effectually, and labor more 
faithfully. But, after all, for each single soul the work 
of life lies not on any public sphere, nor amid great pub- 
lic problems, but in a smaller lot. To stand diligent and 
trustful in that lot, is what God asks. To work out the 
salvation of one penitent and fallible spirit, is our ap- 
pointed task. And the only way whereby we can ren- 
der any worthy service to the Church, or the world, is by 
first yielding to the entreaty of the Gospel, and being 
personally reconciled to God. 

Here, then, would seem to be the outlines of a religion, 
which, being revealed from above nature, as nature looks to 
us, is yet perfectly and beautifully accordant with nature 
in its workings among men, divinely suited to the sphere 
where it is to win its triumphs ; — a religion natural in 
these essential attributes of nature : 1. That it harmo- 
nizes with all the lofty and pure natural sentiments of 
humanity, — as love, gratitude, zeal, decision, tender- 
ness, courage, self-denial ; 2. That it is consistent in its 
manifestations ; 3. That it acts from within outward, — ■ 
that is, from an inward force or faith into visible fruits, 
or righteousness ; and 4. That it fits the facts of expe- 
rience, from sin and its misery up to reconciliation and 
its peace ; — a religion at once profound and practical, 
contemplative and enterprising ; affectionate as a moth- 
er, and inflexible as justice ; tender as John, and bold as 

34 



398 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



Paul ; solemn as the stars, and cheerful as the sunrise ; 
awful as the midnight, and frank as the day ; one with 
the innocent joy of children, stretching their arms to the 
future ; one with the sober conflicts of manhood, wrest- 
ling with the present ; one with the calm rest of age, 
waiting between its little yesterday and its infinite to- 
morrow ; — a religion at once beneficent and prayer- 
ful, watching at Gethsemane, feeding the famished in 
Galilee. 

Come, then, men of a strong heart, in the power of a 
religion like this, come to the healing and purifying of 
our social state ! Begin here, and set this city of Puritan 
piety once more on a hill, a flaming beacon of holy light. 
Let not sloth, cowardice, compliance with the effeminate 
fashions of the world, and inconstancy, too ready to 
falter and look back, lay waste the vineyard of the Lord, 
and, while New England, the American Israel, peoples 
the continent, make her heart sick ! 

More than this, make your Christianity aggressive ; 
crowd it up into the seats of spiritual wickedness in high 
places, the encampments of the rulers of the world's 
darkness ; press it down into the kennels of sottish deg- 
radation. Cast yourselves into these exhilarating tasks 
of Christian renewal. Unless our Christianity does this, 
it is death-struck at the core. The Church that stands 
still, forfeits its right to be called a church. " It is a 
maxim of the military art," said the great modern mas- 
ter of that art, " that the army which remains in its in- 
trenchments is beaten." If that is orthodoxy among the 
armies of empires, it is truer yet of the armies of the 
cross. If we stand still, we stagnate. New outlays of 
Christian heroism must widen the enclosures of the new 
kingdom. This needs men such as your Association 



THE RELIGION THAT IS NATURAL. 



399 



ought to marshal and multiply, not to be shaken by a 
crude speculation or a sceptic's sneer. 

My companions and fellow-subjects under the disci- 
pline of life, I have said nothing to you in detail of those 
manifold solicitings to sin, those trials of fire, besetting 
your steps in the city, — that raining shot of temptation, 
filling all our city air, through which your virtue must 
pass and be proved, and out of which it is a chief office 
of this Christian Union to help you to be delivered, with 
your purity unspotted. Those warnings are familiar to 
you. You know every one of these siren seducers as 
well at least as I. You know what prayers mothers, 
sisters, loving kindred, and believing friends, raise for 
you in quiet homes. You know what the choice is, and 
on which side of it all peace and strength, all order and 
grandeur, all present and eternal welfare, all honor and 
heaven, stand. I have attempted to show you the more 
positive doctrine ; to exhibit that place of strength, where 
the soul, once fixed, is almost beyond the reach of dan- 
ger, disarming evil by the breadth and intensity of its 
convictions ; and to trace before you, too feebly and 
faintly I know, some outlines of that religion, at once 
evangelical and rational, devout and practical, zealous 
and manly, centring in the Gospel, but spreading itself 
over the life of all men, all cities, all countries, all ages, 
binding them into the unity of one mighty Church, — 
which is truly natural, insomuch as it comes from the 
God whose nature has suited it to ours. This might 
rather anticipate temptation, and, working within your 
souls, a living and honest faith, prove indeed " the vic- 
tory which overcometh the world." 



SERMON XXIV. 



FOUNDATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN CITY. 

A CITIZEN OF NO MEAN CITY. — Acts Xxi. 39. 

A CITY WHICH HATH FOUNDATIONS. — Heb. XI. 10. 

By the first of these phrases, Paul vindicates the dig- 
nity of his origin, against the contempt of the most con- 
temptuous of races, challenging a hearing before a Jewish 
mob. The second is a serene prophecy of that immortal 
and equal society, the commonwealth of justified spirits, 
gathered by the Redeemer " out of every kindred, and 
tongue, and people, and nation." In the one, we have 
an instance of honorable municipal pride, taking the 
sanction of an Apostle, whose heart, though flaming 
with zeal for the cross, and supremely consecrated to 
preaching Christ and the resurrection, could yet make 
room for a human passion so pure. In the other, we 
find a type of that perfect economy, whose citizenship is 
heavenly, whose charter is the infinite grace, whose title 
and right of freedom is a faith like the Patriarch's, whose 
Builder and Maker is God. 

To bring the first of these into unity with the last ; to 
make our patriotism, or local attachment, consist with a 
divine hope ; to conform our civil state here to the ce- 
lestial pattern, — is at once the highest scope of our civ- 
ilization, and the unyielding demand of our religion. 



FOUNDATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN CITY. 401 

That religion does not scorn the sentiment of loyalty. 
Paul — who was no one-sided enthusiast, but had pro- 
portions broad enough in the structure of his manhood to 
take in all manly affections, blending genial emotions 
with inflexible principles, and who could harmonize the 
sagacity that knows how to deal with nature, on its prac- 
tical side, with the loftiest spirituality — recognized the 
advantages of having been born in " no mean city." He 
was ready to assert that lawful claim, and, while a stran- 
ger at Jerusalem, arrested under religious jealousy, and 
led off to prison by a rough police, charged by false ac- 
cusations, was resolved to have his share in the good 
repute of his native town. He told the chief captain, or 
city marshal, that he was by no means the seditious 
Egyptian he had been taken for, — making an uproar, a 
ringleader of murderers, — but a Hebrew himself, of Tar- 
sus, a city of Cilicia, " a citizen of no mean city," and so 
entitled to an audience with the people. His plea of cit- 
izenship served him ; and, standing on the castle-stairs 
for his pulpit, he snatched an occasion for his Master out 
of the very teeth of this ferocious, persecuting Judaism, 
and opened the whole doctrine of his ministry. 

It becomes a distinct motive, then, for elevating the 
character of any community, or state, that, as in this in- 
stance, such character proves a protection to the individ- 
ual citizen. Each contribution of uprightness, purity, 
fortitude, or devotion, made to the public stock, returns 
back benefits to the social stockholders, in their private 
emergencies. Nor is that consideration wholly self-inter- 
ested; for it is as natural to regard it as affecting yoar 
fellow-subjects, as your own convenience. Every day, 
all over the world, it is happening that travellers and voy- 
agers are rescued from restrictions on personal liberty, 

34* 



402 



FOUNDATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN CITY. 



or other detriment, by the political virtue of the national 
flag ; and the moral virtue of a local reputation is hardly 
less, in furnishing exemption, furtherance, or some spe- 
cies of facility, quite independent on the personal worth 
of the recipient. The character of your birthplace and 
residence is a shield of slow construction, but ponderous 
when it is once wrought; and every man who derives 
safety from its shelter should help compact its strength. 
It is only meanness and cowardice that will draw out of 
a common treasury, putting nothing in. 

It is, in fact, on this principle — the law of personal 
relations to the public weal — that all national judg- 
ments come to be held as penalties to be warded off 
possibly by private penitence, fidelity, and prayers. A 
sharper perception of this connection, a certain lively 
sense of religious responsibility running into all collec- 
tive action, which their children have partly lost, was 
what instigated our fathers to isolate special occasions 
for really deploring social sins, and supplicating political 
salvation. 

But apart from the bare motive of immediate utility, 
every right-minded man is bound to the loyal duties of 
Christian citizenship by a constraint, which, if held to be 
less efficient by the estimate of a low expediency, be- 
cause it is less involved in our outward security, is none 
the less sacred in its authority, and of a loftier nature. 
I mean the obligation laid on us to build our public mo- 
rality up, according to our inbred conception of what a 
Christian community ought to be, — and because we have 
that conception, — the dowry of the Christian ages ; our 
obligation to shape our actual society, and its institu- 
tions, by the configurations of that ideal, whose outlines 
and plan are drawn in the Gospel, — to fashion our own 



FOUNDATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN CITY. 403 

earthly city into the nearest possible resemblance to that 
city that hath foundations, not built with hands. 

My subject, therefore, is the Foundations of a Chris- 
tian City. It will be natural if, in treating it, I shall 
make special reference to this city of Boston we are in. 

I. I speak, you will see, of foundations that are mor- 
al, — not material, not commercial, nor industrial. The 
first of these moral foundations is Domestic Purity ; and 
the institution representing it is the Family. Two re- 
flecting persons were asked to give extempore definitions 
of the idea of family. One called it " an item of a poor 
nation's wealth, and of a rich nation's poverty." The 
other called it " matrimony doing penance." Both an- 
swers suggest how far our best communities are from 
realizing, at large, the exalted conception of what a Chris- 
tian home should be. It is sad to think how few steps 
we should need to take in any street, to find some dreary 
confirmation of that witty satire on heartless marriage, — 
" Going home by daylight, after courtship's masquerade." 
Men and women do not enter into wedlock as if they 
were entering a sanctuary ; yet no temple is so sacred. 

Outside of cities, the idea of family has external sup- 
ports, — separated domiciles, — some space put between 
every household and the next. Neighborhood does not 
there mean contact and attrition. The awful sublimity 
of an infinite sky comes down between the dwellings. 
The local distinctness is a symbol of the social. Fami- 
lies come to have more marked characteristics, and grow 
into more decided forms of character. The storm and 
the winter, binding them together in a more vivid sense 
of segregation from the rest of the world, render them 
conscious of mutual dependence. But the city huddles 



404 FOUNDATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN CITY. 



individualities as it does houses. It ranges buildings 
into blocks, and characters into ranks of imitators, and 
disperses kindred into a crowd. There are advantages in 
this, and disadvantages. But it does not tend to nour- 
ish souls of strong personal will, nor independence of 
judgment, nor that equipoise of original faculties, care- 
less of the verdict of surrounding fashions, which, in 
town and village alike, is an attribute of every valiant 
and effective mind. 

The danger suggests the caution. As fast as we lose 
the reserve and retirement of a true domestic habit, we 
lose purity and power ; and so we weaken the founda- 
tions of the city. How much affectionate preference for 
the evening circle over the excitement abroad, — so much 
inward strength. How much choice of that calmer and 
familiar communion between brothers and sisters, — so 
much inalienable resource and satisfaction that will sur- 
vive the fever of youth. How much reciprocal affection 
and veneration between children that hasten home eagerly 
from all the fascinations of company, and parents that go 
reluctantly out from a charm in-doors which overmasters 
every foreign pleasure, — so much barrier built up against 
all the breaches of misfortune, — so much prepared soil 
for the culture of public and private morality. Parents 
that forego mature tastes for the thoughtful wisdom 
that condescends to bind these amulets of home delight 
about their children's necks, are as much saviours of the 
city as they are providers of their own honor and joy 
against age. Parents that teach their offspring to look 
on home as only a dressing-room for mixed society, — a 
point of convenient sallying forth to catch the afflatus of 
frivolous assemblies ; or who turn their table-talk into 
recitations of the scandals engendered in some vacant 



FOUNDATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN CITY. 405 

brain, or their parlors into a rendezvous of those falsely- 
assorted platoons that somebody has described as " the 
sexes' school of mutual misinstruction," a "camp of mod- 
ern Amazons," — these are sowing for a harvest of pri- 
vate heart-aches and general decay. 

There are other thoughts. Home is a foundation of 
Christian cities, because, if it is what it was meant to be, 
it opposes the surest and Heaven-appointed resistance to 
the vices that dense populations encourage. It cools the 
inflammation of competitory hatred. It heals the dis- 
orders of prodigals. It forestalls crimes that the law is 
helpless to forbid. It opens Bibles and books that the 
Bible has written. It gives the key-note to refining 
music, and from song the transition is often spontaneous 
to prayers. It bolts out a thousand tempting imagina- 
tions, and wards off, by its chaste employments, the 
wanton possibilities of shame, as if they were ugly fables 
of some antipodal tribe. Build up one Christian home, 
— Christian in no forced nomenclature of courtesy, but 
one that Jesus himself might enter with the blessing 
that visited Bethany, — and you lay a new support un- 
der the foundations of a Christian city. 

II. The next great pillar of these supports is Educa- 
tion, and the institution that represents it is the School. 
At this point the city frequently takes its turn in superi- 
ority over the village. Bring the stimulus of interacting 
intellects to bear on an organized system of culture, and 
you obtain a development of mental activity that is more 
intense, if not so well balanced. If the ambition and 
hurry of the teacher for immediate results do not esteem 
the compass of his scholar's attainments out of propor- 
tion to the depth ; if rapidity does not displace care ; if 



406 FOUNDATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN CITY. 

the mere projecting of ill-assorted and ill-combined infor- 
mation into the memory does not create oblivion of that 
assimilating process by which knowledge is taken up 
into the circulations of the heart's blood, and so converted 
into wisdom ; above all, if the head does not overbear 
the heart, so that science displaces religion, and so that 
the central, indwelling, and all-encompassing God is for- 
gotten in a study of the surface of his creation, — then 
the school is indeed a nursery of the commonwealth. 
Emphatically is it true that the hearts of children — so 
tender to impression, yet so mighty in the germination of 
their energies — are foundations of the city. Misdirect 
them, and, as with the godless earth in the Psalmist's pic- 
ture, all those foundations are shaken out of their course. 

I learn from authoritative documents, that during the 
last year,* in this city, eleven hundred and ten juvenile 
criminals — offenders under age, of both sexes — were 
arrested for punishment, — a number more than a third 
larger than that of the year before, — and distributed to 
their several scenes of legal correction, many of which 
ought in simpler truth to be called seminaries of harden- 
ing and seduction. It is such statistics as these that 
make the yearly reports of the chief of our police sound 
like the gloomy bulletins of a helpless physician, chron- 
icling the decline of a constitution he cannot save. 
Why should our system of education be confined for ever 
to prescribed methods, and to the better provided classes ? 
Why should not new emergencies and advancing thought 
strike out new and nobler plans ? Why should not facts 
so terrible as these — crying out to us like the very trum- 
pets of judgment — create schools for the vicious as well 
as schools for the respectable, — for the vagrant as well 

* A. D. 1851. 



FOUNDATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN CITY. 407 

as the domesticated, — the ragged as well as the clad ? 
Tuition costs less than imprisonment; but a civilized city 
should be ashamed to wait for that discovery. Every 
thieving boy and mendicant girl has a soul for which 
Christ died. Do not mock the Father of lights by put- 
ting them into sunless dungeons. The head of the 
municipal government said, not long ago, " At the rate 
with which violence and crime have recently increased, 
our jails, like our almshouses, however capacious, will 
be scarcely adequate to the imperious requirements of 
society." What will be adequate ? Education will. 
Pour in light, — Heaven's inexhaustible and ultimately 
effectual medicine for depravity. Depose Ignorance, — 
the high-priest in the idolatrous temple of sin ; lead in 
Truth, — the royal minister of righteousness, and " heir 
apparent of all the world." Seven hundred thousand 
pupils, the missionary reports tell us, are under the 
tuition of the Gospel, in heathen countries. What an 
incongruity that there should be a thousand Pagans in 
Boston ! That word Pagan reverses now its original 
Latin meaning. First it signified the rude dwellers in 
villages. But in the process of centralization that goes 
on in older nations, it finds a fitter application in the 
neglected hordes that wallow and prowl about the pur- 
lieus of great centres. Say nothing of the impossibility, 
or the hopelessness, of tuition for the degraded. That 
doubt has been settled by practical demonstrations in our 
favor, in the lowest extremities of the largest cities. For 
you and me, the evening schools in yonder chapel ought 
to have settled it. The testimony of the faithful men 
that have toiled in domestic missions, ever since their 
foremost leader in Boston, Dr. Tuckerman, twenty-five 
years ago, wrote down the now fulfilled prophecy, — 



408 



FOUNDATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN CITY. 



that, with every successive year, each minister serving 
" in the true spirit of that ministry would find his soul 
bound to it by stronger ties," — all that testimony unites 
to prove that the vilest iniquity and the completest 
wretchedness beget no despair of human nature. After 
Wordsworth — with his delicate sensibility revolting at 
the slightest stain on purity, — a soul of almost childlike 
refinement and innocence — had returned to the quiet of 
Rydal Mount, from a visit to the enormities and abuses, 
the sufferings and the crimes of London, he recorded this 
just conclusion of his unmoved confidence in God, and 
in man as God's child : — 

" Neither vice nor guilt, 
Debasement undergone by body or mind, 
Nor all the misery forced upon my sight, 

could overthrow my trust 

In what we may become." 

" What one is, 
Why may not millions be 1 What bars are thrown 
By nature in the way of such a hope ? 
Our animal appetites and daily wants, — 
Are these obstructions insurmountable ? 
If not, then others vanish into air." 

Of knowledge comes industry ; of the interpretation 
of the divine laws, written all over a radiant universe, 
from -the Old Red-Sandstone to Sirius, — on rock and 
grass-blade and shelving sea-shores, — on soils, and the 
structure of plants, and the anatomy of animals, and the 
motion of stars, — comes a wiser life. Except science 
regulates brute instincts, organizes industry, and so casts 
up the highway of the Son of Man into the Jerusalem 
of faith, the social foundations rot. Where there is no 
vision of truth, the people perish. Stringent legislation 
will not save them, nor an imperious constabulary, nor a 
standing army. Generate an explosive agent, like a 



FOUNDATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN CITY. 409 

Parisian rabble's madness, inside a vessel, and clamps on 
the exterior avail little to hold it together. The human 
will, perverted by an unreasoning fury, is mightier than 
all statute-books, as is proved by the outbreak of what 
Mazzini calls " the great electric currents of revolution." 
In the end, there will be no law but truth. Truth is to 
be learned ; and that learning is the just creation of the 
School. 

III. From the School, on to the Church, — from Educa- 
tion to Religion, the third and chief foundation of the Chris- 
tian city. But, observe, I do not mean by the Church 
any inert or Pharisaic body, looking on the wastes of 
virtual atheism among us with folded hands, contenting 
herself with a few handsome decencies of temple-wor- 
ship, or a genteel routine of professions and ceremonies 
that will not soil effeminate fingers. I mean a Church of 
God and his Son ; and that means a Church of sacrifice 
and self-renunciation, — a Church whose first law is 
spiritual labor, whose function is conversion, and whose 
most irresistible impulse is aggression on the empire of 
Satan. I mean a Church whose members take Apostles 
for their examples, as well in bold regenerating incur- 
sions into the Macedonia of unbelief, as in quiet com- 
munings at Olivet and the upper chamber. 

Surely our great seats of population ought to be also 
seats of the vitality and energy of such a living Church. 
We want it in America, and all sects ought to be en- 
rolled in one militant army to push its peaceful conquests 
on, — their jealousies melted down in the common heat 
of a purpose so holy, and their suspicions scattered to 
the winds by their enterprise in reclaiming the lost, gath- 
ering outcasts into the fold, clothing the destitute, and 
35 



410 FOUNDATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN CITY. 



preaching the Gospel to the poor. It was of such a 
Church that Jesus announced himself the Head, when he 
stood up to read from Isaiah's prophecy in the syna- 
gogue of Nazareth. Yet, in most of the larger cities of 
Christendom itself, only a fraction of the citizens ever 
come within reach of the Church's voice. She needs, 
herself, a fresh baptism of the spirit of consecration from 
on high, fresh oil to refill her wasted lamps, fresh con- 
versions to swell her ranks, and fresh love to make her 
whole. And, " inasmuch as the apostates of Chorazin 
are more incorrigible than the impenitent of Tyre," she 
needs these new supplies even more for making Chris- 
tianity evangelical and operative among the wayward 
captives of Mammon and sense in our prosperous capi- 
tals, than in Burmah or Koordistan. 

At one extreme of our vulgar competitors for comfort 
stand the besotted rich, as far from the kingdom of 
Heaven as the needle's eye from stretching to the com- 
pass of the camel, neither entering it themselves, nor 
suffering those that are entering to go in. At the other 
end, the victims of this pride, or of their own sottish pas- 
sions, or of malicious and radical despair, chafing at 
all that is wholesome, and defiling all that is holy. At 
both extremes riot those identical sins that bind the rich 
profligate and the poor in a degrading kinsmanship, — 
intemperance, lust, and sloth. One street alone in this 
city, last year, yielded to your grand jury two hundred 
and five complaints, for violations of peace, for Sabbath 
disorders, for the dissipation of lewd cellars and tippling- 
shops, and the whole brood of petty and aggravated 
crimes that nestle in these kennels of filth and guilt. 
Why has not Christ's Church a missionary for every 
hovel, — a patient compassion to lead every child, clothed 



FOUNDATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN CITY. 411 



and loved, to worship ? Modern sanitary ideas wisely 
forbid burials of the dead within municipal limits, ex- 
cluding that corruption. Looking as God looks, it is 
a far more fatal forbearance that leaves the pestilent 
breath of this moral death, with vents at every corner, to 
poison the living. 

While we lay the foundations of religion deeper, in 
filled and faithful churches of the better-provided, in 
consistent lives and a reverential habit of devotion, let 
some missionary ardor reclaim, if possible, — and God 
has made it possible, — the perishing aliens. By our es- 
tablished institutions, needing only the infusion of warmer 
zeal from our personal will, — our Provident Associa- 
tions, and Ministry at Large, and Children's Mission, — 
let us make our convictions more aggressive, our sin- 
cerity more unquestionable. If we were to name the 
man who, in the conditions of modern society, more ex- 
pressly and literally reproduces the outward work of 
Christ and his first disciples than any other, would it not 
be the missionary to the poor in our cities ? How shall 
he go, except he is sent, or work, unless he is fed ? If 
you shrink from his tasks, has all your due been given to 
sustain his willingness ? Your municipal government 
and your police-officers save dollars. The religion of 
Christ saves two wherever these save one; but it also 
saves what dollars cannot buy ; for it casts into the 
world's sick life that spiritual medicament that cleanses 
its leprosy. It is an alchemy that impoverishes by com- 
parison all the mines and money-mints of the nations. It 
holds open the door of access into heaven. It nourishes 
the communion between all burdened and penitent spir- 
its and the Father, through the Mediator. It lays the 
easy yoke and the light burden on the grateful disciple. 



412 FOUNDATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN CITY. 



It brings down beams of forgiveness, to brighten the lot 
of suffering, to bow the pride of station, to soften stony 
avarice. It makes mankind one, in their Lord. And 
so the Church is the mightiest and the deepest of all 
foundations of the Christian city. 

The continual sophistry of our metropolitan habits, my 
friends, is to arrest the gaze of self-examination, to stop all 
insight with the surface, to cheat us out of all profounder 
spiritual meditation, and to bend every fact to the stand- 
ard of immediate and outward effects. There are things 
in the city, solemn verities and a spiritual Presence, that 
no census can reckon. So many objects arrest the eye 
close at hand, so many voices call, and bribes clink, and 
flatteries dazzle, so many prizes of fortune glitter on all 
the way-sides, that we cannot afford time to go up into 
the still watch-towers, and take the telescope of faith, 
and hold commerce with the everlasting lights and 
oceans ! O how well for us, immortal spirits, if we 
would ! How else shall we ever comprehend our heirship 
in the kingdom of Heaven ? To adopt a paradox of the 
Apostle, we need to look more at what we cannot see. 
We want a stronger faith in things that lie out of the 
range of our touch, and deeper than the plane of our fri- 
volity. We want an affection, — not merely a fanciful 
sentiment, but a hearty and constraining affection, for 
those lowly traits of humanity, and those invisible fellow- 
ships with the divinity, which are the under-currents of 
all our better lives, and are the arteries that join us to 
Christ, making us one in the body of his Church. 

You have, traversing all the streets and squares of 
your metropolis, in dark passages under ground, the con- 
duits that bring in country waters, to cool your thirst 
and purify your dwellings. These streams are silent and 



FOUNDATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN CITY. 413 



hidden ; but they flow none the less constantly, in obedi- 
ence to the skill of science, and the bubbling supply is a 
manifest, daily benediction upspringing in your houses. 
These hollow pipes beneath lie among the "foundations" 
of the city's welfare. So ought to run, in many secret 
channels, noiseless to the ear, but mighty in their final 
good, the benignant currents of love and faith. " There 
is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city 
of our God " ; and these are its streams, — the love and 
faith of Christ; give them access from the fountain of 
his heart, as you do the lake's tribute, and they shall 
make this your city, every city, glad, — cities of our 
God, — make them whole. You know them by the 
glory of their result. Their testimony is in the excellent 
lives they nourish. Their fruit is in a polluted sensuality 
redeemed, and a barren worldliness refreshed. 

So have you those winding conductors, also laid among 
the foundations, which spread the airy fuel that feeds so 
many thousand lamps. All their course is hid, and never 
so much forgotten as at noonday ; but when night falls, 
the dull rods are tipped with innumerable tongues of 
flame, and the city blazes with a radiance that almost 
counterfeits the sun. The years will come, I think, 
when we shall lay as carefully, and at as cheerful a cost, 
those trains of beneficent design that shall illumine be- 
nighted minds, and cheer the whole air with hope. 

I was shown, a few days since, that complicated con- 
trivance of mechanism and genius, the municipal electric 
telegraph, applying the grand wonder-working agency of 
our time to the communication of alarms of fire. This 
wirework woven over our heads, like a dry organization 
of pure nerves, without body, blood, or bones, intercepting 
no fight or rain, or splendor of the sky, the talking appa- 

35* 



414 FOUNDATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN CITY. 



ratus of a few distant watchmen for the safety of life and 
treasure to a careless or sleeping city, with the hammers 
of church-bells for its tongues, and a thousand men to 
start at its summons, and a common clock to tell, with 
its hourly stroke, the entire order of the circuit, — all 
seems to a half-initiated spectator as a sort of demiurgic 
miracle, or wizard's spell. But it all has its match — and 
more, has it not? — in that spiritual marvel, which we 
will not marvel at, — the fine sympathy that knits human 
classes into a brotherhood. Not less quick than the flash 
of the fluid is the thrill of pity, or trust, or gratitude, that 
vibrates from one end of the social scale to the other. 
Ignore it as we will, to our injury, — deny it if we will, 
in some selfish mood of treachery to the Messiah, — God 
has put the same blood into the veins of all his children. 
He has wrought our structures of one fibre, under all 
housings, clothings, and complexions. For a millennium, 
or else for a universal death-dance and reign of terrorism, 
as we choose, we are all, my brothers, each other's keep- 
ers. In this our city, whether one member suffer, all the 
members suffer with it ; or one member rejoice, all the 
members rejoice with it. Dismiss from their posts the 
blessed guardians that keep the vigils of Christian charity, 
and the whole moral order would explode, like a city on 
fire, with no concert for alarm and action. We cannot 
be wholly segregated, or isolated, or self-containing, if we 
would. God has made us of another kind ; and Christ 
has died for no such race. East end or west end, north or 
south, can no more rot in atheistic sloth, and the rest not 
sooner or later be convulsed and agonized, than one limb 
of the body can mortify, and the rest leap with healthy cir- 
culations. Let us respect this magnetic law of our life. 
Tarsus, the Cilician city, standing by the banks of the 



FOUNDATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN CITY. 415 

Cydnus, a river only two hundred feet broad, could 
hardly have looked to the eye of our admiration so im- 
pressive as it seemed to its patriotic son. For it is said 
of it that the luxurious monarch Sardanapalus built it, 
and another city besides, in a single day. Only its ghost 
remains. But even there, the superiority of ideas over 
materials was already illustrated. It was the learning 
of the inhabitants that made it the rival of Athens 
and Alexandria. It was the thoughts that had it for 
their birthplace, that shed their lustre across to Judsea, 
arrested the violence of the Hebrew persecutor, put a 
safeguard round Paul's threatened breast, and raised it 
to the honor of being " no mean city." Its " founda- 
tion " was its wisdom, and its glories were its schools. 

Boston, subscribing fifty millions of dollars for its own 
investment, grasps the termini of three thousand miles 
of railway. Is it a question of no solemnity, whether 
the pupils it dismisses every evening from the great 
school of its calculations and competitions, to the num- 
ber of not less than forty-two thousand souls, pouring 
them along these radiating avenues, and dropping them 
at the doors of all New England, are really better souls, 
or baser souls, for their learning ? It exports, annually, 
ten millions of value. If true to the ideas that founded 
it, and faithful to the trusts of Providence, it ought to 
despatch from its bosom, under all those out-bound sails, 
an influence on the world's life not to be reckoned by 
mathematics, but by the moral measurements of eter- 
nity. It taxes property to the amount of one hundred 
and eighty-seven millions of dollars. Let that all be 
held by the New Testament estimate of stewardship ; 
let it be used as the lending of Almighty love, to be reck- 
oned for, every farthing, to Almighty justice ; and would 



416 FOUNDATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN CITY. 



not some greater benefactions from its bounty bless hea- 
thendom and want, in its own borders, and to the utmost 
islands of the sea ? It numbers a population of one 
hundred and thirty-eight thousand. What reason can 
you bring, other than the perversity of human passions, 
and our unbelief in Christ, why these should not be a 
hundred and thirty-eight thousand consistent witnesses 
to Christian righteousness ? If a third of that number 
crawl yearly out of immigrant ships, with an imported 
superstition, and an indolence bred in their bones, ought 
not the chief city of the Puritans, with the vantage- 
ground of a clean continent and two centuries of provi- 
dential history, to have created such an atmosphere of 
republican light and virtue, that the immersion of Old- 
World barbarism itself should be like a cleansing baptism 
into the renewing spirit of the Gospel ? 

The true foundations of the city — those that most 
resemble it to its pattern in the skies — are not its 
breadth of acres, or the costliness of its square feet ; not 
the firm pavements of stone, worn smooth with the ever- 
lasting beat of travel ; not the solid walls that bear up 
its ambitious roofs ; not the lengthening wharves that 
welcome the merchandise of all coasts, and grasp the 
commerce of all waters ; not the entries of its custom- 
house, nor the splendor of its mansions, nor the sum of 
its capital ; not any nor all of these, though they all may 
be the tokens of a righteous prosperity. 

Those foundations are rather in the mind and temper 
of the people. They are in the virtuous order, and the 
self-controlled moderation, and the refined dignity, of 
your families. They are in the patient thoroughness, 
the regular discipline, the wise forecast, and the religious 
reverence, of all your systems of education. They are in 



FOUNDATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN CITY. 417 



the zeal, the punctuality, the strict devotion, and the 
generous toleration, of your worship. They are in the 
abundance of your charities, the cordiality of your cour- 
tesies, the sobriety of your hospitalities, the modesty of 
your manners, the steady march of your industry, the 
integrity of your traffic, the nobleness of your policy, the 
liberality of your government, — the graces that adorn 
your manhood. Plant such foundations as these ; lay 
them deeper and surer every day ; and you shall be 
" citizens of no mean city." 

And though the humiliating conclusion of all our 
proudest and most loyal meditations must be, to confess 
that we are pilgrims and strangers, and have here no 
continuing city, not even the venerated tabernacles of 
the fathers, our Isaac and Jacob ; yet, lifting our eyes 
heavenward, we confidently seek one to come, — a city 
that hath eternal foundations, — the type of these our 
fairest cities on earth, — the Jerusalem that is above and 
free, — the city of the living God. 



SERMON XXV. 



NATIONAL KETRIBUTION, AND THE NATIONAL SIN.* 

BECAUSE SENTENCE AGAINST AN EVIL WORK IS NOT EXECUTED 
SPEEDILY, THEREFORE THE HEART OF THE SONS OF MEN IS 
FULLY SET IN THEM TO DO EVIL. — Eccl. viii. 11. 

This annual Fast is rather a relic of a past age, than 
a natural and vital expression of the present one. For 
better or for worse, — some among us say for the better, 
but I am disposed to think rather for the worse, — the 
ideas and associations, the forms of thought and life, 
which gave such an anniversary its birth, have either 
drifted away, or been essentially changed. It is evident 
that the stated proclamation from the Executive for " a 
day of public fasting, humiliation, and prayer," is a doc- 
ument extorted by a decent respect for ancient usage, or 
by a deference to official routine easier to follow than to 
break through, rather than a cordial utterance, or even 
echo, of a strong and spontaneous impulse from the 
heart of the whole people. And, on the other hand, as 
we might expect, that degree of reluctant, languid, and 
interrupted observance which the occasion gets, is more 
like a hesitating acquiescence on the part of a few in a 

* Preached on East Day, 1851, soon after the passage, in Congress, of the 
bill known as the " Fugitive Slave Law." 



NATIONAL RETRIBUTION, AND THE NATIONAL SIN. 419 

custom to which the consent of good men has lent first a 
religious and then a prescriptive sanction, than it is like 
the eager and general homage of a lively conviction, or a 
constraining emotion. Our Fast serves as a sort of spir- 
itual high-water mark, to show how far the stanch, self- 
denying sincerity of our Puritan ancestors once rose, and 
how far the same tide, from one cause or another, has 
ebbed out in the children. It stands as a monument, 
graphic but awkward and funereal, of a state of things 
and a set of feelings gone by, looking very much as some 
surviving memorial of the monastic or ascetic period of 
the Church would look in the midst of the easy manners 
and luxurious indulgences of times that came after, — a 
hair shirt, or hermit's girdle, or spiked shoe, re-appearing 
in the wardrobe of a modern bishop's palace, or an an- 
chorite's skull for a memento mori in the voluptuous ora- 
tory of a fashionable devotee. 

But the observance, heartless or hearty, common or 
exceptional, does call to mind the honest, sterling virtues 
of a race of men that really believed in God. There is 
something refreshing in the remembrance that such men 
have lived, — men that planted themselves on the everlast- 
ing foundations, and stood there cheerfully, come bland- 
ishments or come tortures, harvest or famine, peace or a 
sword; men that, being surrounded by hollow artifices 
and hypocritical shams, could yet be simple and pure ; 
men that saw down through sophistry to the lie at the 
bottom which the sophistry was put over, to hide and 
recommend ; men who, in every kind of perplexity, threw 
themselves back on the oracles of Scripture as if they 
were walls of rock ; men that dared to take all manner 
of sin that came in their path by the throat without fear 
of being thrown, and could march up to look at death 



420 



NATIONAL RETRIBUTION, 



face to face, without so much as a thought of running, if 
conscience only went with them ; men that, so far from 
doubting that God's original law is more perfect and 
binding than any legislation of his fallible creature, man, 
saw plainly — what men of deep moral discernment 
have, in fact, never failed to see — that this very alle- 
giance to a superior law is the only bond and safeguard 
of governments or constitutions which are human ; men 
that held no parley with corruption, made no compro- 
mise with wrong, took no price for right ; men that had 
reasons to give for serving the Almighty, but would 
take none for serving the Devil ; that might be killed, but 
never could be seduced ; and for every threatening ques- 
tion, from throne or judge's bench, in the teeth of raging 
prelate or mighty monarch, inquisition or scaffold, an- 
swered with a valiant " Thus saith the Lord." If it is 
refreshing to remember that such men were, what a 
joyful inspiration to know that they were our fathers! 
What a motive, tightening every sinew in our frame, to 
prove ourselves not utterly unworthy, by cowardice, cor- 
ruptibility, and practical atheism, to be called their chil- 
dren ! 

These invigorating recollections, still clustering about 
the faded and decaying observance which they ordained 
in earnest, fitly lay open my subject, the doctrine of 
which is this : that the slowness of God's public retribu- 
tions never embarrasses their certainty ; that while, " be- 
cause sentence against an evil work is not executed 
speedily, the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them 
to do evil," that sentence is only gathering force, to strike 
down with more unerring aim and heavier penalties, at 
last. Let us endeavor, my friends, like fearless and can- 
did inquirers, discharging ourselves of the transient pas- 



AND THE NATIONAL SIN. 



421 



sions which only becloud the moral vision, and rising 
above the narrow issues which agitate, but do not 
strengthen, the judgment, to lay calm hold of a principle 
which reaches beyond passing interests, embraces many 
special examples, comprehends the whole history of hu- 
man society. 

For, in fact, the simple conviction that men need now 
most of all, condensing as it does all the lessons of 
instructive experience, is this : that God governs the 
world. Plans are ours, but their prospering or over- 
throw is with God. Beginnings are ours ; but not the 
end. Courses of life and systems of policy that run on, 
under human guidance, many years, are brought up at 
last by a Providential catastrophe. Just as they get 
strong, and begin to feel domesticated, a subtile element, 
interfused, — no diplomatist could tell how or when, — 
works up and down to vitiate their organization, rots 
their fibre, and disorders them to death. Governments, 
founded by the fresh energies of a colony, or the solemn 
earnestness of revolution, grow prosperous only to grow 
weak, take up the seeds of decline along with the juices 
of health, and, finding their destiny means their doom, die 
the death of suicides. So that at last we are driven to 
doubt whether even plans, beginnings, and undertakings 
are ours, except by permission. The little that mortals 
can do, in building or governing, is hedged about by the 
checks and limitations of Omnipotence ; and, if not oth- 
erwise, at least by sheer inability to account for history 
by what we know, we are driven to believe that the 
nations are judged by God, and the earth dependent on 
Heaven. 

The grand perversity of society and politics, from the 
first, has been in their ingenious devices for obscuring 

36 



422 



NATIONAL RETRIBUTION, 



this fundamental religious law ; a law which in itself, by- 
its infallible accuracy and its inevitable execution, suffi- 
ciently proves the superiority of a Divine over every hu- 
man law. From Assyria to Spain, from Babylon to 
Mexico, from Hebrew sedition to British bankruptcy, 
this has been the inevitable, mathematical demonstration, 
which national ambition has set itself to deny. Some- 
times by commerce and sometimes by war ; now by a 
better disciplined defence, or a more savage military drill, 
and then by a faculty of financial accumulation, more 
peaceful perhaps, but equally crafty, selfish, and unscru- 
pulous ; now by comforts singing of security like Sirens, 
and then by aggressions formidable for prowess, — the 
nations have each promised themselves insurance against 
judgment, and played their several games of self-perpetu- 
ation, — relied on an immunity from evil, because sen- 
tence against evil was not executed speedily. Find one 
amongst them all, — one tribe, or country, or dynasty, or 
empire, — that has not travelled to ruin as men travel to 
their graves, or else allow that the rule is beyond dis- 
pute. 

It is in the nature of every public or political sin, that 
it must have a double retribution ; first, that which falls 
on the individual who commits it, or is a party to it; 
and second, that which undermines and destroys the 
commonwealth itself. There is a private judgment, and 
a public judgment. The soul of ruler or citizen, law- 
maker and law-keeper or law-breaker, must render up 
the account of its personal stewardship; and likewise, 
the collective body called the nation, whose great organ- 
ized sin is made up of these personal contributions, has 
to be reckoned with, according to the laws of the Eter- 
nal Providence, by its loss or its progress, its ruin or its 



AND THE NATIONAL SIN. 



423 



glory. And how fearfully does it augment the responsi- 
bility of public conduct, that the downfall of a nation 
drags with it into the common wreck such hosts of suf- 
ferers, the guiltless with the guilty ! 

The law of the Divine economy seeks out the personal 
offender and hauls him to the tribunal, in whatever alli- 
ances, social combinations, and political fashions he may 
screen himself, — showing that accountability is not to 
be put on and taken off as we go in and out of legisla- 
tive halls, primary meetings, corporations, or parties of 
pleasure ; that though the sinner may say We, God's 
law says Thou ; that, " though hand join in hand, the 
wicked shall not be unpunished." Now, just as certain 
as this is, so certain is the slow preparation of righteous 
chastisement for nations. If the fraudulent dealer must 
answer for his deceptions ; if he who kindles in himself 
the foul fires of lust must afterwards be steeped in the 
fetid fumes of sensuality ; if the unprincipled worldling 
must come abashed before the blaze of Christ's spiritual 
glory ; so must every country and government that per- 
sists in oppression, in cruelty, in injustice, in venality, in 
refusing to hear the cry of them that have no helper, and 
in clutching at extorted riches, stand at last before the 
judgment-seat, and be weighed in those bright balances 
that never rust, nor swerve, nor break. " The hire of the 
laborers that have reaped down its fields crieth, and its 
cry enters into the ears of the God of Sabaoth." 

What an eminent patriot of the Old World, himself 
almost a martyr to liberty, has said, deserves to be con- 
sidered, that " religious principle has presided over two 
thirds of the revolutions of single nations, and over all the 
great revolutions of humanity." What higher proof than 
this fact need we, that nations always stand before the 



424 



NATIONAL RETRIBUTION, 



bar of Christian rectitude, and that, though the sentence 
be not executed speedily, yet equity, mercy, and freedom 
shall finally press down their immutable measure on 
every government under the sun ? 

The mistake is, that they who exercise the trusts and 
enjoy the emoluments of government are too ready to 
forget the primal law in the vast mechanism and com- 
plicated distribution of power. In something of the 
impious spirit, though without the frank presumption, of 
that arch-prince of godless rulers, Frederick the Great of 
Prussia, they are ready to say, politically, " Religion of 
some kind is necessary to the well-being of a state, and 
he is not a wise king who allows his subjects to abuse 
it " ; but they also add, with him, " Nevertheless, he is 
not a wise king who allows himself to have any religion 
at all." Now, in a republic, those persons who exercise 
the trusts of government, and share the temptations of 
rulers, are the citizens. It is they, therefore, who are 
here tempted to great peril if they forget the law of 
natural retribution, — they that need to be girded up, as 
Christian men, with the faith that the delay of that ret- 
ribution is never, and cannot be, because God's justice 
sleeps. 

We commit a radical error, if we imagine that national 
retributions are always attested by outward calamity. 
They are often most actively at work where no visible 
disasters darken the sky. Many a nation has gone to 
destruction with a sound exchequer and regiments full ; 
because the surest perdition that can overtake a people 
is the deadening of its spiritual sensibility, the blinding 
of its sight for discerning between the true and the false, 
the darkening of its inward light ; and " if the light 
that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness." 



AND THE NATIONAL SIN. 



425 



This fearful process may be going on, at the core, while 
all externally is fair and flourishing. Conquest may be 
stretching out its arms to grasp unrighteous gains ; en- 
terprise may be heaping up its treasures and strengthen- 
ing its stakes at home ; fortune may be filling its coffers 
and multiplying its bank-vaults ; traffic may be sliding 
its merchantmen from every port into all navigable wa- 
ters ; the eyes of voluptuous complacency may stand out 
with fatness ; and yet, beneath all this prosperous show 
of life, there shall be the daily inroads of death. The 
land may be full of the finest of the wheat ; and yet 
consumption is on those faculties which are the vitals 
of the soul. Herein is another working of the everlast- 
ing law. With every wanton denial of our purer aspira- 
tions, those aspirations themselves grow faint. Resist- 
ance to our better angels drives those angels away. If 
we cast insults on our power of moral discrimination, 
the power itself will perish. No nation can smother, 
whether in the legislative council, the fashions of society, 
the iniquities of trade, or the oppressive enactments of 
the statute-book, those eternal sentiments which rise 
up to bear their melancholy witness, even in debauched 
and degraded souls, without realizing in the very act a 
punishment infinitely more dismal than any defeat of 
its armies or any damage to the credit of its treasury. 

This, I suppose, is the real significance of those many 
passages in Scripture where a disobedient people, reject- 
ing the guidance of the Almighty and quenching the 
lamps he has lighted in the soul, is said to have its 
heart hardened, — to have grievous delusions sent upon 
it that it should believe a lie, — to be " let alone," like 
Ephraim, because it is joined to idols, — to be forsaken 
of the heavenly compassion. Just in proportion to the 

36* 



426 



NATIONAL RETRIBUTION, 



intensity of that accumulated light on which we ob- 
stinately shut our eyes for the wages of injustice, is the 
depth of the damnation already preparing for us. The 
cup is at our lips ; and though we do not taste its bitter- 
ness, it is none the less poison in our blood. If we 
cover up some avaricious appetite under a plausible pre- 
tence of seeking the public good ; if we plead for private 
profit under the sacred name of general concord ; if we 
apply handsome names to unseemly plots, and baptize 
a bargain with oppression as a reconciliation with alien- 
ated friends ; if we make ourselves parties to a syste- 
matic policy which is the essence of all vices and the 
sum of all crimes, because we love an unobstructed 
market better than the rights of humanity or the favor 
of God; or if we plead an unrighteous promise given 
once as a justification for perpetual fraud, then are we 
ourselves sold and bound slaves under sin, and though 
the wheels of retribution seem to tarry, and sentence 
against the evil work is not executed speedily, we might 
as well doubt our Maker's eternity as the prophecy of 
our own perdition. 

Why will not men see this intelligible law, blazoned 
forth as it is in characters of light in every chapter of all 
the chronicles of our race ? Why will not citizens and 
rulers alike understand, that force is not persuasion, 
coercion is not conviction, conscience is not teachable 
by chains and bayonets, nor amenable to the prudential 
maxims of political economy ? The ever-accumulating 
burden of experimental wisdom is against us. The irre- 
sistible flight of time, the very revolution of the earth, 
and the hastening of the hours, are against us. The 
voice of rebuke from the ages, the deep thunder that 
has been drawing its awful crescendo from the first hu- 



AND THE NATIONAL SIN. 



427 



man tradition, gathers volume and intensity against us 
every instant. We may build barricades for our prison- 
houses, and plant guns and staves and chains about our 
victims ; we may stigmatize or crucify the prophets that 
tell us the truth ; we may rejoice in every fresh success 
of cruel usurpations over human freedom ; but we cannot 
thereby stay the advancing steps of retribution. We 
cannot, by police or militia, by conventions or statute- 
books, by certificates of bondage or judicial forms, press 
down behind the eastern horizon that ascending sun 
which shall bring in the day of our judgment. 

God forbid that I should say these things, or utter 
these warnings, save with a sorrowful mind and reluctant 
lips. The times are not bright enough, the prospects 
around us not cheerful enough, to suffer conscious levity 
of thought or inconsiderate speech. Questions too per- 
plexing and too intricate disturb and divide the best intel- 
ligence amongst us, to be passed upon with hasty or over- 
confident opinions. One of the very transgressions we 
have to deplore, as well as to reckon for, is that very 
violence of language which irritates and provokes pas- 
sion, instead of convincing the understanding, and that 
bitterness of partisan feeling which first robs itself of 
the faculty of seizing any other than a one-sided and 
prejudiced view of the great question at issue, and then 
goes on to create discord between brethren, to open and 
widen breaches in social intercourse, to spoil the amen- 
ities of hospitality, and to insult the sacred charities of 
religion. 

This, among others, seems to me one of the gravest 
errors into which the present posture of the public mind 
in reference to the recent legislation on slavery has con- 
ducted us, — that so many who speak and write on the 



428 



NATIONAL RETRIBUTION, 



subject, both in public journals and in private conversa- 
tion, refuse to recognize the existence of any other than 
two broadly distinguished classes ; namely, unqualified 
advocates of the law as it stands, and traitors to the gov- 
ernment. I cannot think that the self-possession of this 
community has been so completely unsettled, nor its in- 
tellect so stultified, that it is necessary to resort to this 
sweeping classification in order to guard against an al- 
leged incipient rebellion. It not only exasperates well- 
disposed persons by its presumption, but it inflicts a posi- 
tive wound on the truth. There is a third class of men in 
the country, — how numerous cannot be told till they are 
counted, but not very inconsiderable in numbers nor con- 
temptible in character. It is composed of those who are, 
always have been, and resolutely propose to be, loyal 
subjects to the general government under which they live, 
unwavering friends of the union of these States, and obe- 
dient observers of the laws. They do not assort with dis- 
organizes, nor take counsel of fanaticism. Their daily 
associations are with such as rely most securely on the 
settled order of society, and their liveliest sympathies lie 
on the side of submission, good faith, and good feeling 
throughout all sections and classes of the country. But 
they have been led, by processes within their own minds 
as uncontrollable as the winds of heaven, and which they 
honestly trace to the workings of that spirit which Christ 
compared to the wind that bloweth where it listeth, to 
contemplate every possible enslavement, or re-enslave- 
ment, of any human being, under any supposable array 
of circumstances, in this age of the world and within the 
great American republic, as a terrible offence against the 
plain will and word of God, and against that humanity 
which he has made and called his child. They believe 



AND THE NATIONAL SIN. 



429 



the system of negro slavery as it exists in the United 
States to be explicitly at variance with the Almighty's 
will and law, and with all the duty, integrity, purity, 
and innocent happiness of man. They regard it as the 
special and overshadowing affront of this nation against 
the Father of eternal justice, truth, liberty, love. They 
know that it is an anomaly in our national institutions, 
* an abnegation of our history, a plague in our politics, a 
gigantic curse upon industry, a foul insult to morality, a 
blight upon learning, science, and the arts, the annihila- 
tion of God's ordinance in the family, the prostitution of 
woman, the scourge of innocence, the violation, direct or 
indirect, of each of the commandments, and the denial of 
the Gospel, the intensest meanness and the foulest filthi- 
ness and the most profane impiety, the consummation of 
crimes, the comprehensive antagonist of the kingdom of 
Heaven, constituting, in the whole and in each of its 
parts, " the abomination of desolation," " standing where 
it ought not." They deliberately and assuredly believe, 
that every man so convinced and so seeing ought in 
every place, by every means, in street and house and 
shop and office and caucus and legislature and pulpit, to 
bear his most earnest, express, unmistakable, consistent 
witness against it, — against all its spirit, rules, methods, 
actings, devices, excuses, — but most of all, against its 
aggressions and extensions. They believe that such ag- 
gressions are forbidden by the civil constitution, while 
the very continuance of the wrong, in any shape, is re- 
buked by the entire spirit of that venerated instrument, 
and by the designs and convictions of the men that formed 
it. I ask you if it is more than just, that these men 
should stand exempt from being ranked with rebels and 
revolutionists, — if it is more than reasonable, that enlight- 



430 



NATIONAL RETRIBUTION, 



ened legislation should show some respect for such citi- 
zens, — if it is more than right, that they should dispas- 
sionately labor and pray for some relief from a require- 
ment which would render their active obedience to the 
magistrate, by the re-enslavement of a fugitive, in their 
eyes as direct and impious an affront towards Almighty 
God, as falsehood, blasphemy, or robbery ? Let us 
consider these things in the temper of brethren, learning 
thereby forbearance, moderation, and charity, — excellent 
graces of the Christian life always, and never more need- 
ed to save us from disgraceful inconsistencies than now. 

It was well said by a wise old writer, that " to trouble 
and unsettle many things is not to do much ; but, being 
unsettled, to compose them, more ; to keep them from 
being unsettled, most of all." Respecting this maxim, it 
is the duty of high-principled statesmen and legislators 
to heed, not only the loftiest and single suggestions of 
then* own nature, but the consciences of the people whose 
will they profess to administer. There is no measure, 
especially in a republic, so radical, as that which arrays 
what is most Christian in a nation against the magis- 
terial authority; no publication so inflammatory, as a 
law that commands a moral people to do that which 
a large majority of them believe to be unjust ; no docu- 
ment so incendiary, as one that sets on fire the quench- 
less instinct that abhors oppression, or wakes from sleep 
that unmanageable instinct which has shaken so many 
thrones, — that " resistance to tyrants is obedience to 
God." And if, on the other hand, the conscientious 
opponents of this law will apply to their determined and 
unflinching efforts for its repeal the same purity of prin- 
ciple that makes its provisions offensive, and calmly rely 
on that serene Providence which is sure to work out a 



AND THE NATIONAL SIN. 



431 



final success to them if they do not forsake its guidance, 
then who knows but we may avert, by action and by 
prayer, the impending judgment ? 

This faith let us all hold fast, parting with it no sooner 
than we will part with life, — that there is no true patriot- 
ism without faith in God, — no artifice of selfishness, or 
partisanship, or ambition, which can hide us from those 
retributions that search out all the secrets of the universe ; 
that though sentence against an evil work be not execut- 
ed speedily, it will descend at last. 

Could some penetrating apprehension of this unbend- 
ing law seize on the mind of the people, then, dropping 
all our childish exultations in American progress, re- 
straining our idle boasts of growing territory, prosperity, 
and wealth, we should turn to some manly regulation of 
the advantages we enjoy. Instead of avariciously clutch- 
ing at the promise of larger gains, we should soberly be- 
think ourselves how we may most honorably devote the 
advantage already committed to our hands. What we 
are to do, will rise into a question of far more imposing 
magnitude, than what we have done. How to be true to 
the lofty and stern demands of Justice, of Freedom, of 
Truth, of God, as these are so clearly and emphatically 
proclaimed through the facts of our history, the intima- 
tions of Providence, and the wondrous exigencies of the 
times, — will be a problem taxing the intelligence and 
the energy of the people far more urgently than any 
schemes of political ambition. The formation of a true 
national character, broad in its moral foundations, firm 
in its supports, and symmetrical in its proportions, — 
combining together the religious faith of the old Puritans 
and the enterprise of the young West, the warmth of 
Southern impulse balanced and directed by Northern 



432 NATIONAL RETRIBUTION, AND THE NATIONAL SIN. 

steadfastness, — beating with the blood of Raleigh and 
of Penn, of Carver and Eliot, of Roger Williams and 
Henry Vane, — blending Norman chivalry with Saxon 
industry, and the reverence of the Elder World with the 
hope of the New, — this should become a nobler stimu- 
lus to our hopes than any accumulations of perishable 
glory. All extension of empire would look poor, beside 
the fulfilment of the aspirations of Christianity in our 
life, — all the splendors of outward fortune turn dim, be- 
fore the upright doing of God's Eternal Will. 



SERMON XXYI. 



THE WORD OF LITE: A LIVING MINISTRY AND A LIV- 
ING CHURCH.* 

HOLDING FORTH THE WORD OF LIFE | TO WIT, THAT GOD WAS 
IN CHRIST, RECONCILING THE WORLD UNTO HIMSELF. — Phil. ii. 

16, and 2 Cor. v. 19. 

It will not be travelling out of the path of thought nat- 
urally set open by the introduction of ministers to their 
office, if I seek to represent the preaching of Christ as a 
means of communicating life. 

Vitality is a test of any system of doctrine, as it is of 
any teacher's qualification. If you would find the value 
of any message, ask of it, Does it live ? Do vital pulses 
leap through it ? Does it reproduce its life ? Does it 
help men to live ? Does it leave them more alive or 
more dead than they were without it ? Get an answer 
to these questions, and you will find whether the given 
ministry is of heaven, or of a private self-interest, — 
whether it comes out of the all-quickening and all-com- 
prehending God, or out of some dreamer's brain. 

Nothing goes with much momentum, in the long trial, 
that docs not carry life with it. Accumulate the learning 

* Preached July 30, 1853, before the Graduating Class of the Meadville 
Theological School. 

37 



434 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



of a thousand Melancthons ; pile together the erudition 
of ancient schools and modern universities ; what does it 
contribute to the real treasure of men, if it does not create 
life in them ? The alcoves of libraries may be but the 
chambers of a mausoleum, — sepulchres of thought, in- 
stead of its nurseries, — and meeting-houses, spiritual dor- 
mitories. Eloquence, burning as Peter the Hermit's, is 
wasted breath, unless the succeeding life of men shows 
that it reached the springs from which that life w T as fed. 
So in all communication of man with man. Nothing 
tells ) nothing does execution, nothing survives very long, 
but what makes men feel and will and act, — nothing but 
the " word of life." Find me a book, a speech, a preacher, 
a gospel, that is not life-giving, and I know there is no true 
message, no inspiration, no revelation from God, there. 

We meet, gentlemen, for your anniversary, at the sea- 
son when the forces of creation are most exuberant and 
exultant; when the early summer is sending its swift 
pulses into every shrub, its moist breath across the clover, 
and affluent Nature encompasses us everywhere with her 
wealth of beauty. 

"We are thus reminded, that every manifestation of 
God in the body of his works is a new beat of his heart. 
His successive creations are the puttings forth, in forms 
of matter, of an unchangeable life behind and within, — 
a life never exhausted by expressing itself. The worlds, 
thrown out into their chiming revolutions ; solar systems, 
set playing in the shining cycles of a universe ; races of 
animals, whose skeletons, bedded in rocks, become the 
illustrations on those leaves of God's great history, the 
strata of the globe ; the spring sunshine that unveils the 
fragile beauty of the wind-flower ; the autumnal chemistry 
that paints the woods ; the majestic elm that stands a 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



435 



graceful goblet brimmed with streaming life from root to 
leaf, and the frail weed that springs under its shade, and 
the moss that clings to its bark, — these are only so many 
orderly utterances of God's vital being, so many words 
of his life. 

But we must add, instantly, that for the spiritual being, 
man, the only real life is in goodness. Can it not be 
proved so ? If the fountain of all the life that flows 
through the fields of the universe is God, God is but 
another name for goodness. All the life that proceeds 
from him, therefore, must be according to goodness, or 
love ; whether it beats in the bosom of a sinless child, 
or nerves the arm of a hero-saint ; whether he rounds a 
planet, or tints a rose-leaf ; whether he balances the Plei- 
ades in their spheres, or adjusts the microscopic ma- 
chinery of an insect's wing ; whether the afflatus of his 
Spirit bears up the " seraph that adores and burns " be- 
fore the throne, or lights the lamp of a feebler reason in 
these vessels of clay. Only so far as we share in the Fa- 
ther's goodness, then, are we partakers in his life. The 
measure of our being, as living souls, is precisely the 
measure of our excellence. In proportion as our actions 
are in harmony with divine laws, and our familiar frame 
of feeling with God's will, we live. Herein is the Apos- 
tolic saying true, " To be spiritually-minded is life." 
Every rising up of pure aspiration ; every clinging to 
principle when you are tempted ; every choice of abstract 
right above politic selfishness ; every putting down of 
sensual passion by prayer ; every preference of a truth 
which inherits a cross, over the lie that flatters you with 
a promise of prosperity, — is a palpable motion of God's 
life within you. Indeed, this is the most intimate sub- 
jective knowledge you have of God. God, out of his 



436 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



express revelation, never speaks to us so audibly as when 
his spirit prompts us to struggle, or braces us for a sacri- 
fice. A generous impulse is the plainest pledge of his 
presence ; a devout trust in him, the mightiest demon- 
stration of his Fatherhood. Superseding all our pains- 
taking, traditionary beliefs in a God that was alive once, 
this makes us believe in a God that kept his vigils over 
our last night's slumbers, tinged the east with purple at 
this morning's dawn, and opened a new apocalypse of 
his glory in its sunrise ; — a God who is as busy in the 
drops of this season's early rain as when he gathered the 
waters out of chaos ; whose voice comes as clear from 
the rustling of every way-side shrub, as when the first 
man heard it among the cedars in Eden ; who revives 
the glorious pageant of his ancient wonders and splen- 
dors in every year's seed-time and fruitage ; who is as 
close to the sorrowing heart that bends over the new- 
made grave to-day, as to Hagar in the wilderness ; and 
who is as faithful to the good man's prayer now, as to 
David's harp, or the songs of Paul and Silas at midnight 
in the prison. 

Let these general thoughts serve at once to introduce, 
and to project into its widest relations, the particular 
theme of my discourse. 

The order in which the subject will most naturally ex- 
hibit itself requires me first to state, as briefly as I can, 
the essential doctrine of that " word of life " which 
Christian preaching is to hold forth ; not the gospel of 
to-day, but of all days, — the same yesterday, to-day, 
and for ever. It is of vastly more moment to any 
preacher that he should have definite and realizing no- 
tions of what he is to preach, than any set of rules or for- 
mal furnishings for the manner of preaching it. After 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



437 



considering, in this way, what the " word of life " itself 
is, that is, the living and life-giving doctrine, we shall 
proceed to the characteristics of the living ministry of 
that Word ; and then of the living Church, embodying 
and obeying it. 

I. First, in order to apprehend what the life of the 
Christian Church, or of the Christian soul, is, we must 
apprehend the life of its Head. He is " that word " 
made flesh. 

Now, inasmuch as the true vitality of the Church con- 
sists in the fact that its chief functions are reconciling 
functions, and as the Church's complete consummation 
will be the complete reconciliation of human society, — 
so it finds its supreme sanction in the reconciling, or lit- 
erally the atoning, character of its Head. " God is in 
Christ, reconciling the world unto himself." Those 
words are the key to all the Gospel, to all Christian his- 
tory, to all Christian experience. They hold in them the 
power of that life which has so far energized Christen- 
dom, and is to redeem and sanctify the world. 

Stated in its theological relations, I hold this truth to 
stand thus. For reconciliation between finite and infi- 
nite, there must be a reconciler combining both in his own 
person. Here, precisely, is the grand, redemptive synthe- 
sis, effected in Christ. Bridging over, by the mystery of 
his nature, — a mystery whose very claim on our faith 
consists in its transcending the definitions of science, 
since faith, of course, never properly begins till we have 
got to the limit of science, — bridging over the gulf that 
yawned between the perpetual frailty of man and the 
perfection of God, — he is the vinculum that binds up the 
spiritual organism of the world, dislocated and bruised 

37* 



438 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



by sin. If Christ were only man, he could not mediate 
between man and God. If he were only God, he could 
not mediate between God and man. Here is the eternal, 
inherent necessity of the mystery of the Incarnation, 
reaching back before Abraham was, into the bosom of 
the Everlasting Father ; and there deriving the purchase- 
power to lift humanity to heaven. The vital point of 
the whole Christian system is the inspiring contact it 
establishes between the life of God and the life of man, 
by a mediating Christ ; a Christ qualified to mediate, 
by bringing over the forces of the Almighty Spirit to 
reinvigorate the wasted spirituality of the race, to restore 
and comfort the individual soul that will receive him. 
Here is the only corner-stone for a Church, — a personal, 
divine Christ. Any plan of theology that misses this 
is defective at the core. Pride of speculation, ambitious 
will-worships, theories of self-culture, philosophies of in- 
tuitions, moral respectabilities, never reach the disor- 
dered spot, nor meet the practical want of souls in ear- 
nest. Under the real stress and strain of life, what the 
penitent soul cries out for is that heavenly mediation 
that unites and reconciles the two opposing elements of 
utter imperfection in the performances of human nature, 
and the immaculate holiness of the Judge of all. 

If you ask whence comes the need of this reconcilia- 
tion, I answer, it comes from the need every man is 
under of passing over from the mere natural life, which 
is the life he is born with, into the spiritual life, which is 
simply the inward reception of Christ by faith, and 
which saves him, that is, makes a Christian of him. Of 
that new birth, Jesus himself explicitly asserts the uni- 
versal necessity. The natural life has for its ruling 
principle selfishness ; and, however decent or even lovely 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



439 



to the eye, it is never holy. Being mixed as to its 
good and evil elements, it has no security against per- 
dition. The regenerate or holy life may begin so early 
as to open along with the powers of consciousness, and 
grow up with the growing faculties, thus blending with 
and sanctifying the natural ; but it is a distinct process. 
It cannot begin too early nor too suddenly : to create its 
beginning, in accordance with the laws and promised 
help of the Holy Spirit, is the office of preaching. But 
it is a new life when it comes ; it is the reception, into 
a sinning and enfeebled humanity, of the quickening and 
supernatural life of Christ the Reconciler, who comes 
into the world quite as much to impart to us of God, as 
to be the perfect pattern of a man. In accordance with 
this view, sin being a universal taint, error, guilt, of the 
race, the renewed life must begin with a Prodigal's con- 
fession, and be baptized with a Magdalen's tears. Saint- 
ship always rears its most beautiful proportions on the 
lowly ground of that humility. The full burst of rap- 
ture from the lips of the redeemed is an august crescendo 
from the sobs of the penitent ; and every Gloria in Ex- 
celsis, from the Church Triumphant, swells up from a 
heart-broken Miserere. 

There are two theories of salvation ; or rather, one is 
a theory of self-propelling ; the other is God's plan of 
salvation. I mean, human development, and divine de- 
liverance or redemption. One says : " Save yourselves ; 
nature gave you noble capacities ; put them forth. Ap- 
ply your mind to self-culture. Unfold your own facul- 
ties. Inspect your own attainments. Instinct and in- 
tuition are your only Messiah. Study the Constitution 
of Man. Read Combe and the ' Vestiges.' Respect the 
natural laws : they are your only religion. Genesis is a 



440 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



myth. Man is no such creature as the Bible says. The 
first animated being was an animated atom, and then 
slowly expanded into a mollusk, which afterwards grew 
into a fish ; and this, after many attempts, struggled on 
to dry land, and converted its fins into legs (the only 
kind of conversion, by the way, that this philosophy rec- 
ognizes), and so became a reptile; and then the reptile 
shot out wings and became a bird ; and the bird dropped 
its wings downward one day, and so, by reconversion, 
got two more legs, and became a beast ; and the beast, 
after a while, rose erect, and became a man"! You are 
aware that this, called by courtesy a philosophy, is no 
caricature of a theory put against the Bible by some of 
the thinkers of the nineteenth century, like Lamarck and 
Demaillet, who have remained outside of insane asylums. 
The theological notion which makes the chief end of man 
to be self-culture — if that can be called a theology which 
leaves the 0eo? quite out of the account — is only a le- 
gitimate induction from these postulates in science. 

I think you will not suspect me of standing up in 
the middle of the nineteenth century, in the face of a 
theological school, to discredit human culture ; but I say, 
that, under the logical action of a theology of self-devel- 
opment, worship would ultimately be exploded. It may 
survive awhile by virtue of old associations, but it sur- 
vives illogically. Self-culture is limited solely to the 
human consciousness, and there it must spend its ener- 
gies, groping in its own twilight, pulling at its own feet, 
supplicating its own will, — an endless series of moral 
contradictions. It is godless, for the simple reason that 
it has no God. It makes of Messiah nothing more than 
a Hebrew youth, who managed his propensities more 
skilfully than other men. Faith is dwarfed down to 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



441 



confidence in our own power to accomplish what we 
undertake. Remorse is only the natural regret for an 
Epicurean, or at best a Stoic, miscalculation. Not sat- 
isfied with the fine reaction of Channing's thesis, that 
human nature is a glorious product of God, — against 
the ultra-Genevan hyperbole, frozen into a dogma, that 
human nature is utterly devilish, — it goes on to boast 
the individual self to be a glorious creature. Man is 
much hampered for the present, it says, by his circum- 
stances, but only needing fair play to outdo the arch- 
angels ; and his only responsibility is to his own organi- 
zation. As to sin, it is only the bugbear of Calvinistic 
nurseries and Scriptural legends. There is no such 
thing. Imperfect culture, crude impulses, half-way de- 
velopment, — these are what old wives call sin. One of 
the latest foreign bulletins of this mad materialism pro- 
claims, with a frankness which some of our domestic 
deniers, who have really reached the same pitch of ir- 
reverent negation, might well emulate, — " The true road 
to liberty, equality, and happiness is atheism. Let us 
teach man that there is no God but himself." And an- 
other ridicules " poor, timid Voltaire and Diderot," as not 
half-infidel enough in their infidelity. "Why ? Because 
" they were never quite ready to look on man as the cul- 
minating point of existence." 

Of course, then, prayer can be nothing else but a poor 
mock-device, whose real function is self-excitation. Ask- 
ing and receiving, prayer and answer to prayer, are out 
of the question. If we pretend to pray at all, like politic 
bargainers we bring our modicum of homage, not as the 
spontaneous tribute of a glad soul, that cannot keep its 
praise and glory back, but to say, " Lord," or rather, 
" Great Impersonal Inane, O All, Pan ! here is my pe- 



442 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



tition ; give me the value for which it pays the price." 
Even Schiller candidly declares, that with him piety is 
not the end of life, but only a means of attaining to the 
highest culture through the calmest repose, or balance, 
of the mind, — the frigid ultimatum of Pantheism! Paul 
declares, peremptorily, " Ye are not your own : glorify 
God in your body and your spirit, which are God's." 

Turn, then, to the other system, — Deliverance, or 
supernatural Redemption. That says, God in Christ 
reaches down to help, save us ; only asking that we, by 
love and faith to the Saviour, and corresponding or out- 
flowing faithful moral effort, will let ourselves be saved. 
The Gospel is an offer from above us. It is a divine 
interposition of deliverance, embodied in a Divine Re- 
deemer. Christ comes forth to men from above, accord- 
ing to the whole plain doctrine of John's Proem to his 
Gospel, and the New Testament everywhere. And 
why ? Because man is in a dilemma. He is tainted. 
Disobedience has forfeited his safety, under a perfect 
and inviolable law. He knows he is beset with proclivi- 
ties to sin. Mortal infirmities encompass him on every 
side. The integrity of his moral power is broken. His 
part now is, like that of a traveller fallen into a pit, to 
lay hold, and keep hold. Do you say that is doing 
nothing, and gives no room for work or the muscles ? 
Try it, and see if it is not work. Believing gives up the 
heart. Do you fear this heart of love and faith will not 
produce righteousness of life ? But did you ever know 
a person to refuse or grudge service to the being he su- 
premely loved ? To keep it back is ljarder work than to 
give it, then. The heart's affections originate and compel 
work. The heart wrought upon, and then given, an in- 
exhaustible fountain is opened, out of which all spiritual 



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action must proceed. In that thought lies my whole 
philosophy of salvation ; and it is far enough from being 
mine in any sense of property. If I understand him, it 
is precisely Paul's doctrine of justification by faith. It is 
the inspired and inspiring doctrine. It is the doctrine of 
" God in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself." 

"We are able, now, to contrast the two, as to their re- 
sults or fruits. The habit of the one is introversion ; that 
of the other is aspiration. The emotion of success in 
the one is self-complacency ; in the other, devout grati- 
tude. One yields a virtue that is steadfast, a character 
permanent, because its roots clasp the Rock of ages ; the 
other, a virtue fitful and uncertain, snapped like tow in 
the fire of temptation, — a zone of moral restraint more 
dissolute than the Corinthian, and principles looser than 
the Spartan's ; and in society, by this time, through the 
accumulating pressure of an unchristianized barbarism, 
we should have worse than Punic honesty, and the ve- 
racity of Arabs, — a civil anarchy like what might con- 
vulse a world full of Cuban buccaneers, and a commerce 
that would disgrace the market-place of Circassians. 
The one would show us, at fairest, a few instances of 
moral beauty, finite, artistic, and mortal. The other 
would pour its gushing devotions out in some musical 
aspiration of the closet or the conventicle, surpassing, in 
its heartiness, all the cool deductions of the brain. Its 
chosen lessons are lyrics, not demonstrations. It feeds 
on the rhythmic contemplations of a John. It kindles at 
the songs from David's harp. It weeps over Thomas a 
Kempis's prose. It soars to heaven on the contagious 
ecstasies of a Moravian hymn. 

Christ, then, is more than the Founder of the Church, 
as he is so often called. He pours his own life into it. 



444 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



It is his body. He did not stand apart, and, by a mere 
manual exercise, lay its corner-stone, and rear its struc- 
ture outside of himself. He rather threw it forth from 
himself ; and, informing it with his Spirit, the Comforter, 
took up a constant abode on earth, in the life of his fol- 
lowers. Laying down his Hebrew body, his soul eman- 
cipated itself from all national restrictions, and went 
forth to make its dwelling in every believing heart. 

His advent was the inauguration of the Divine Life 
on the earth. Hence the saying, half mystical but all 
true, reported by the Evangelist, " The bread of God is 
he who cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto 
the world." So intimate is the union between the dis- 
ciple and Jesus. " I am the vine, ye are the branches"; 
" I in you, and you in me." 

According to this doctrine, it begins to be plain enough 
where, and where only, you may expect to find a Church 
that is alive. It is only where the reconciling office of 
Christ is felt as a reality, and where the immediate gifts 
of his divine Spirit, in the communion of love, are a 
part of the soul's experience. Without this, you have 
very interesting associations, no doubt, and social com- 
binations, — civil, political, scientific, philanthropic, ethi- 
cal, and even religious ; but unless they are religious 
according to the way of Jesus of Nazareth, you have not 
got a Church. The only idea that will organize that, is 
the idea of the Cross, and Reconciliation by it. Morality, 
or the virtues, — Philanthropy, or the humanities, — 
Naturalism, or self-culture, — they are all taken up, em- 
braced, guaranteed, in the Christ and him crucified ; for 
then they rest on an authority that at once transcends 
and supports them. Without him they have lost their 
root ; and, though originally started from the living vine, 



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445 



if they persist in their ungrateful will not to abide in him, 
nothing can prevent that they be cast forth as withered 
branches. 

Precisely here, my friends, may be found a deep defect 
in much of the current theology. Christ is too much re- 
garded as having introduced Christianity, and then retir- 
ing to let it work its way. It has been a mistake to 
dwell exclusively on the benefits wrought by Jesus 
Christ's coming on past conditions of society. The in- 
fusion of that fresh and living stream into the stagnating 
current of human history, when the world by its own 
wisdom knew not God, or had forgotten him, and the 
garden he had made beautiful by his own planting, and 
radiant with his miracles, was turning into a dry desert 
of heathenism, did not end with the ascension, nor with 
the apostolic age. The life that was then poured into 
the world's empty channels, through the quickening 
words and the yet more inspiring works of the Redeem- 
er, has a faint and feeble symbol only in the reviving of a 
thirsty and dusty city, when the cup of a country lake's 
cool waters is made by the careful hand of science to 
run over, and their gracious wave sets in, a regulated 
blessing through its streets ; — a faint and feeble symbol, 
I say ; for Jesus said, " Whosoever drinketh of this wa- 
ter " — deep as the well is, cold as the spring may be — 
" shall thirst again," — thirst in fever and in toil, and in 
the burning sorrows of mortality ; " but whosoever shall 
drink of the water that I shall give him, it shall be in him 
a well of water, springing up into everlasting life." 

What we need to comprehend, then, is that Christ, in 
all the power of his Spirit, and all the sanction of his 
promises, and all the searching application of his pre- 
cepts, is introduced a spring of reconciling life into the 

38 



i 



446 THE WORD OF LIFE. 

affairs and the heart of the present world ; life into the 
very organic structure of human society ; life into the 
operations of commerce ; life into the legislation of gov- 
ernments ; life into the order and training of families ; 
life into the responsibility of individuals ; and conse- 
quently, that he is as much a gift of life to this genera- 
tion and to this community as to the primitive brother- 
hood, or to the cottage at Bethany. If Christianity is 
what it pretends to be, or anything kindred to it; if 
Christ himself uttered one word to be believed in all his 
claims to the Messiahship, then every man, woman, and 
youth in this house may have as real and close a union 
with him as John who leaned upon his bosom, or Mary 
who washed his feet with tears, or the children that were 
privileged to be taken into his arms and blessed. For he 
is a Spirit, and not a form ; a vital presence, and not a 
bygone story ; an energy in the heart, and not a soulless 
echo of tradition. The infant, whose brow felt the 
breath of our American air for the first time yesterday, 
enters as much into the inheritance of that life, as the 
Judsean fishermen that he called to leave their nets and 
follow him. The young man who to-morrow conse- 
crates the enterprise of his manhood to purity and jus- 
tice, making his character a steadfast column in the 
framework of an upright society, — to be trusted always, 
and believed in everywhere, — is as much an heir to that 
life, as the brothers that were told they should drink of 
Christ's cup, and be baptized with his baptism; and 
every patient soul, self-sacrificing amidst this week's 
trials, as those immediate partakers of his cross that he 
pledged to seat on the twelve thrones in his kingdom. 

I speak to you as thinking men, not less than as feel- 
ing and sometimes suffering men, when I ask you, if you 



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447 



have never felt a meaning in that comparison of the 
Lord, expressing a union the most entire between him- 
self and those that thus accept him, — " As the branch 
cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no 
more can ye, except ye abide in me." 

Does it not begin to appear, then, how the Church 
depends on the characters of those who fill its ranks, and 
execute its tasks ? The life given it is given on such 
conditions, that if the Church is not filled, from time to 
time, with believing, earnest, holy hearts, its past renown 
will not save it. The Church of to-day depends on the 
souls living to-day. The Church here depends on the 
souls living, and about to live, here. Salvation is still 
a voluntary matter, and must be worked out. Christ 
does not abrogate free agency. The Church universal, 
or any branch of it, must receive ever fresh accessions 
of life, interest, power, through individual hearts, or 
else must sink inevitably to death. It lives only as 
they that are of it live. It is vital only with their vital- 
ity. It is a live body only as they are live Christians. 
" Now, then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though 
God did persuade you by us : be ye reconciled to God." 

II. Here enters, then, the office of the ministry. It is 
to produce this Life, — to take up and carry forward, 
in man's behalf, Christ's reconciling work ; by whatever 
methods, according to whatever theory ; by communica- 
tion and by incitement; by rousing and kindling the 
dormant capacities of the soul, and by taking the things 
of the Spirit, and showing them ; life, at all events, and • 
at all cost, — life as opposed to stupor, half-belief, spirit- 
ual indifference, or a heart split between God's worship 
and mammon-worship, — life, not death. 



448 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



1. A Living Ministry; what constitutes that? The 
first condition it requires is confidence, on the part of 
the men that exercise it, in the office and work itself. 
Whoever harbors a settled scepticism as to the truthful- 
ness, the high Christian legitimacy of his calling, carries 
a virtual treachery in his own heart. Unless a candid 
and penetrating reflection will scatter it, he should abdi- 
cate. It will vitiate all his action, and unnerve the right 
hand of his resolution. No work can be done right 
thoroughly, and handsomely, about which there is a per- 
petual doubt, querying of the hearer's mind whether it 
is worth doing. Believe in it or fail in it, is a maxim 
that will hold of any vocation, preaching or ploughing, 
statesmanship or masonry. But it holds especially of 
work spiritual in its nature, or dealing with humanity 
and truth. To go on there, after a fair facing of the 
doubt, and a failure to overmaster it, is a trespass. It 
leads to a thousand mischiefs, not the least of which is 
the ruin of the workman's simplicity. Service under the 
loss of integrity is not only falsehood, but it is slavery, 
which is also death. Whoever would be a freeman, or 
even a living man, must believe in what he does. Other- 
wise, sow T broadcast as he will, a certain subtle poison flies 
out with all the seed he throws, that cheats him of a har- 
vest. It is in vain that he goes forth against sin, with 
lightning like Chrysostom's on his tongue, arms stout as 
bars of iron, and thunderbolts in his hands, if he cannot 
lift, out of a fervent and believing heart, the old watch- 
word of the Crusaders, " God wills it." 

2. Another condition, indispensable to a life-giving 
style of ministry, is distinctness of purpose. There is 
such a thing as ascending a pulpit from a vague feeling 
that the institution of the ministry is a very becoming 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



449 



appendage to good society, — ought to be kept up as 
one of the props of respectability, without any clear 
conception of the object to be accomplished, or any 
definite aim, directing every exercise connected with it. 
Double-mindedness creates confusion, and confusion be- 
gets uneasiness, and uneasiness irritates to disease, and 
disease brings death, or that indifferent stupidity which 
diners from death principally in the doubtful distinction 
of not being buried. That labor is always most satis- 
factory which cuts oft the loose shreds and entangle- 
ments of side-aims, and possesses a clean, rounded unity. 
There is no employment in the world that contemplates 
a more precise and clear result than preaching, — the 
forming, religiously, of the character of the hearer, re- 
newing in him a spiritual life. There is always a charm 
and a power in sharpness of drawing, whether in an out- 
line of Raphael, a process of logic, the progress of a pro- 
fession, or the plan of life. 

3. Another means of life to a living ministry is the 
constant presence, in the administration, of a quick and 
profound sense of the nature and the dignity of the souls 
it speaks to. It is one thing to foist human nature into 
the throne of God, but quite another to honor it as 
God's child. Every religious teacher knows, that the 
sanctity of the subjects he is familiar with does not se- 
cure him against belittling impressions, any more than 
their native vitality secures him against a lifeless utter- 
ance. Even in pleading for salvation, the august appeal 
to the spirit, in behalf of its eternal peace and freedom, 
loses half its unction and its power, because we forget, 
even while the burning message is on our lips, what that 
spirit is in its origin, in its destination, in its immortal- 
ity. Could every preacher come before his people, each 

38* 



450 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



time he meets them, penetrated with a living conviction 
of the grandeur, the infinitude, the preciousness of the 
soul of every hearer ; could he escape from all the be- 
numbing influence of habit, and the constant tendency 
of details to fritter away reverence, and tame wonder 
down ; could he keep his realizing perception of what a 
soul is, as vivid as if the revelation of it were made each in- 
stant afresh to his own mind, — it is safe to say, not merely 
that harvests, richer than his most venturous hope dared 
dream of, would crown his toil, — an unprecedented 
intensity touching his Christ-like lips with inspiration, 
and clothing every word with wings of fire, — but also 
that a zeal for the task would seize on his own heart, 
sending him to it with an impulse that he could not 
keep back, and would make his every message like a 
chapter from the gospel of life. What was a task be- 
fore would be a task no longer ; and he would be raised 
so far above all lust for an outward recompense, that 
the thought of waiting for it would be like that of ask- 
ing a premium for giving the fatherless their due, or 
being hired to love one's mother. 

Regard man as only a creature to be got decently 
through the ceremony of life, or only as a lay figure to 
be dressed in the trappings of a prosperous civilization 
for purposes of art, or as an actor to be trained to a skil- 
ful part among the decorations and appointments in the 
histrionic genuflexions and tergiversations, the etiquette 
and the bargaining of a great conventional and commer- 
cial play-house of a world, — nay, further, regard him 
only as a mind to be filled with knowledge, or as a 
memory to be stuffed with information, — and it will 
not be strange, if, so far as all the purposes of a Chris- 
tian discipline are concerned, a ministry followed under 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



451 



such estimates were lifeless, and should yield a lifeless 
product. 

4. The living ministry is a ministry that never loses 
sight of its original and spiritual purposes, in the dull 
round of a mechanical or perfunctory discharge of the 
external duty ; never sacrifices the spirit that giveth life 
to the letter that killeth, sense to sound, truthfulness to 
propriety, honesty to expediency, simplicity to exhibi- 
tion, nor, what is more common than all, heartiness to 
sheer habit. There is a kind of preaching, and it is not 
confined to any one school of theology, which, if it spoke 
itself out, would say on Sunday morning to the congre- 
gation, after this fashion: " Well, dearly beloved breth- 
ren, I have come into your pulpit to-day, because I have 
agreed to come. It is in the terms of an old contract 
between us ; a contract that was formed, to be sure, 
when I was disposed to take a somewhat more fanatical 
view of the matter than I am at present. But I respect 
the bargain: worship is a social decency, and a graceful 
adjunct to civilization. Established usage looks in this 
direction, and religious institutions are a politer kind of 
constabulary. I am here in my place, as the bell rings, 
therefore, and I take occasion to remark to you, as J 
think I have done before, that it is proper you should be 
saved. The Bible is pronounced authentic by competent 
antiquarians, and has uncommon literary merit ; the 
laws of good-breeding have settled it that virtue is a 
desirable accomplishment, besides being a safe protec- 
tion against unpleasant penalties invented by magis- 
trates ; and Christian faith I will recommend as a 
prudent specific against disagreeable consequences gen- 
erally reported to follow wicked courses. Amen." In 
this quarter lie a peril and a wrong, which at present 



452 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



comprehend in their bearings more mischief to genuine 
Christianity, and more disasters to the prevalence of a 
Christian manhood, of the heroic stamp, than all other 
perils and wrongs combined. I mean the tendency to a 
continual decay of vital sincerity in the routine of the 
business, the dissolution of all earnestness under the slow 
paralysis of the custom. The biographer of De Maistre 
discloses the estimate put on preaching in the seven- 
teenth century, by observing that, in early life, he had an 
intention of becoming a preacher, but, happening to be- 
come religious on the way, he gave it up ! Are there not 
some in our own day who reverse the process, and, hav- 
ing begun to preach religion, persist in preaching after 
they have ceased to be religious ? It is this heartless 
routine that is fatal to both parties : it is the death of the 
function, and the damnation of the functionary. Rather 
than have its life eaten out by it, a Christian society 
would do well to be disbanded. Better that the formal- 
ities of such a ministry should be brushed away, as a 
stumbling-block before the gate of Heaven. 

5. A Living Ministry : its engagedness will be a nat- 
ural engagedness, and its methods natural methods ; not 
a spasmodic, not a fitful, not an artificial activity. It 
will not attempt to excite a warmth of the moral parts 
by friction, nor to promote a galvanic action of principle 
by the apparatus of an ecclesiastical battery, nor to ex 
tort gushes of pietistic sentiment by the forcing-pump ot 
strained exhortation. It will throw itself back on the 
laws of the soul, and use no other dynamics than the 
spiritual. It will do nothing for stage effect, which is the 
essence of cant ; using speech out of which all meaning 
has withered. The life it will seek first to possess in its 
own inmost heart, and then to transmit and diffuse, is 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



453 



that sustained, regular life, having its springs among the 
pillars under the oracles of God, beating with the even 
pulse of health, revealing its transcendent beauty in daily 
purity and justice, as conspicuous in the household, the 
market-place, and the counting-room as in the sanctu- 
ary. This life will tell on the open and yielding heart of 
the world, with a benignity of influence, of such holy 
and regenerative power, as no reach of vision, save that 
prophetic eye that looks into the immortal ages, can 
measure. 

6. A living ministry will cast off the spirit of formal- 
ism, or rather that dead body of formalism that has no 
spirit ; it will forsake paths that have no better recom- 
mendation than that they are beaten and dusty, out of 
allegiance to every behest that comes direct from the 
bosom of reality ; it will be in itself, on its practical side, 
an example of its doctrine ; it will set that doctrine forth 
in a spirit at once transparent and fearless, unpretending 
and scholarlike ; despising all guilty servility to the over- 
bearing few or the popular many, it will refuse to be 
hemmed in by any arbitrary geography of its province, 
or to be imposed upon by politic sophistry ; it will have 
its frank and independent word on every matter that af- 
fects the hopes or the integrity of mankind, without the 
boyish folly of perpetually running about to proclaim its 
independence, and saying bold things only to show that 
it dares to ; it will free itself from all prejudices that im- 
pair its single-mindedness ; it will place itself among 
men, as a genuine helper of humanity, in all its garbs 
and all its trials, brave as a prophet, devoted as an apos- 
tle, tender as John, fearless as Paul, ardent as Peter, 
blameless as James, a learner of the Christ, a workman 
whose errand is from Heaven, to persuade and lead 



454 



THE WORD OP LIFE. 



men's souls thither. "When such a ministry is realized, 
be sure not only that it will not have to dispute its title 
to honor, will not have to plead for a hearing, will not 
complain of a decline of its prestige ; be sure not only 
that the eager heart of the community will reverence it, 
will leap to listen to it, but be sure also that the reign of 
irreligious worldliness will be broken up, and the fairer 
kingdom of spiritual truth and life will be established on 
its ruins. 

This sort of ministry, too, proceeding out of an endear- 
ing faith in the Lord of life, will extinguish the vile am- 
bition among preachers to turn sermons into orations, 
and the pulpit into an ethical or literary lecture-stand, 
substituting smartness for sanctity, — the bitter root of 
so much clerical impotence. Preaching that runs from 
any man's brain downward is very likely to run thin and 
run out, as so much preaching does. Only that unction 
is mighty, which, being poured through a mind at once 
cultivated and consecrated, draws its original inspiration 
from Him who spake as man never spake. Overmaster- 
ing all his anxieties about his position, foreclosing the 
query what he shall preach about, a query that always 
reveals a relaxed conviction and an empty covenant, this 
sweeps all his energies one way, in spite of indifference 
or opposition, in spite of worldly complaisance and flat- 
tery. 

I have said enough already of the substance of doc- 
trine to be preached, to forestall any occasion for enlarg- 
ing upon it as one of the qualifications of the ministry 
here. One or two warnings, however, lie so much across 
the line of our liberal tendencies, that I cannot forbear an 
allusion to them. 

7. A ministry of the word of life, as follows from our 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



455 



doctrine thus far, is one that preaches more than moral 
decency, — preaches piety, regeneration, and faith. En- 
thusiasm is not a danger that the modern Church has 
much to fear from. We want righteousness much ; but 
a vital faith first, as the quickener, the inspiration of 
that. In the Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan tells us of a 
Mr. Legality, " a very judicious man, and a man of very 
good name " ; and of his having " a pretty young man 
to his son, whose name is Civility " ; and of their both 
boasting great skill to take off the burden from Chris- 
tian's shoulders ; and of their dwelling in the village of 
Morality, where provision is always cheap and good, and 
one may live with honest neighbors in credit and good 
fashion. But Evangelist shows that Mr. Legality is a 
spiritual cheat, and that his son Civility is a hypocrite, 
and that the village of Morality has no church in it for 
the preaching of any but the doctrine of this world, be- 
cause " by the deeds of the law shall no man living be 
justified." We must go, brethren, beyond Sinai to Cal- 
vary, — beyond the deeds of the law to the pardon of the 
cross. 

" Talk they of morals ? 
The grand morality, thou bleeding Lamb, 
Is love of thee." 

8. The ministry that holds forth the " word of life " 
must not be afraid to assert sometimes, on the authority 
of Scripture, what passes its own reason. Every great 
spiritual doctrine terminates in mystery, by the very ne- 
cessity of spirit. Bound religion by the geography of 
the understanding, and it ceases to be religion. Faith is 
sacrificed to science. There is more in our religion than 
dictionaries can define, or syntax state, or logic prove. 
The very essence of faith is a reverential confession of 



456 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



the limitations of sight. In one of the temples at Mem- 
phis, there was a statue of Isis, with the face veiled. A 
son of the priest, curious to unlock this marble secret, 
and to see what hidden beauty might glorify the features 
beneath, hacked off the stone veil with a hammer. He 
found, of course, only the ragged gashes of his own mis- 
chief. An impious inquisitiveness, prying too far, had 
spoilt the divine symmetry of the image. So is it with 
us all, too often, — foolish children, that would subject the 
mysteries of revelation to the inspection of sense, and, 
despising faith, rudely insist on vision. We leave only 
a deformity to admire, and a ruin to adore. Not yet, 
not yet, can we behold face to face ! Few eyes, I think, 
have seen deeper into God's majestic disclosures than 
those piercing ones that looked out from under the dark 
Hebrew brow of the Christian historian, Neander. But 
this was the motto that he kept inscribed on his study- 
wall, making his library to open upward into heaven, — 
" Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to 
face." 

9. A living ministry is one that not only speaks with 
directness and simplicity, addressing itself, with a tone 
of manly earnestness, straight to the matter in hand, as 
if dealing with ponderous realities that need no circum- 
locution, but it avoids abstruse terms for the most part, 
and, in preference, chooses language that is concrete and 
personal. The individual or the sect, for instance, that 
speaks habitually of Christianity, however reverentially 
and gratefully, will be found to exercise a feeble com- 
mand over the affections of men, compared with the one 
which, when it means the same thing, says, Christ Jesus, 
the Saviour. So the preaching that enumerates the doc- 
trines which cluster about the crucifixion, and presents 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



457 



them, however eloquently, as only an abstract scheme of 
truths, will often glide languidly over the unroused con- 
science ; while enthusiasm takes fire, and zeal stretches 
every nerve, at each thrilling mention of that central 
figure, the cross, or those dear scenes, so vivid to the 
sense, — Calvary and the Garden. Napoleon's celebrated 
maxim, " There are but two powers in the world, kindness 
and the sword," is but a feeble paraphrase of the fiery- 
hearted Loyola's, — " Two kingdoms divide the world, 
Immanuel's and Satan's." It was never the utterance 
of smooth abstractions, that wrought with drastic en- 
ergy on the dead in trespasses and sins ; — brought three 
thousand converts into the Church, by a single sermon 
at Pentecost ; fascinated the young Florentine artists, 
and drew them away from their models and galleries 
to catch the pictures that were unrolled in the sentences 
of Savonarola, the author of the " Triumphus Crucis " ; 
moved back an audience of French noblesse in a percep- 
tible bodily recoil from the cathedral altar, when the fin- 
gers of Massillon's imagination opened the covers of the 
blazing pit ; cast down thousands of sturdy English yeo- 
men upon their knees to pray, when Wesley ordered the 
visible array of heaven and earth into the service of his 
oratory ; bore the gracious blessing of Bunyan's enchant- 
ing dream on its world-wide errand of holy delight, — 
a charming evangel ; made the stout-hearted New Eng- 
land Puritans at Northampton clutch the railings of their 
pews when Edwards told them of the " due time," as if 
their feet were that instant veritably sliding ; and extorted 
from a brave but sensual soldier the confession, that he 
would rather storm the bridge of Lodi than hear a chap- 
ter of the Epistles to the Corinthians. Dying men, you 
have observed, speak little of Christianity, and less of the 

39 



458 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



system of truth, or laws of nature. They say Christ. 
Last breaths are too short for abstractions, and can only 
articulate the one dear and all-prevailing name. The 
fading sight loses all images but the cross. And so a 
whole body of hard divinity has sometimes been melted 
down by one hour of pain ; and, on the stammering lips 
of death, a dainty philosophy has burst into that strong 
cry of praise, — " I know that my Redeemer liveth." 

Revelation is never abstruse. The New Testament 
says nothing of " Christianity." The word is not there. 
But when God would save the world, he sends the Sav- 
iour, with a throbbing heart and a living voice. The 
first teachers said nothing about Christianity; and, for 
an abstract Christianity, it is doubtful if they would ever 
have faced martyrdom. But "Christ crucified" and 
"the resurrection" they could preach in jails and syna- 
gogues, turn the world upside down for and die for, 
counting it all joy. And so effectually were some of the 
strong concrete words they used, — though borrowed from 
a Hebrew economy swept clean out of the world almost 
while they were writing, — yet lodged in the undying 
affections of men, that you can no more extract their 
power by age, than you can dry their odors out of the 
cedars of Lebanon. 

Is it said that such representations of the profession as 
I have here given, by presenting a standard that is im- 
practicably high, are a discouragement to those that might 
be induced to enter it? Heaven forbid that anything 
should be said, here or anywhere, dissuasive of assuming 
the ministerial office ; the reluctance is deplorable enough 
already. But I do not suppose that a stringent stand- 
ard is one of the things likely to repel any laborer true- 
minded and stout-hearted enough to make the Church 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



459 



desire him. On the contrary, I believe a lofty standard, 
to every man whose nerve is not flaccid, — any brave, 
resolute, aspiring man, — is one of the most fascinating 
things under the sun. It will even tighten slackened 
sinews. 

And just here I find a new argument for a living min- 
istry, in the fact that it would be the speediest antidote 
to that dearth of efficient ministers that is now, in all 
Protestant sects, so generally lamented. Various rem- 
edies are proposed. But let it be thoroughly understood 
and felt in a community, that its religious teachers were 
a body not merely reputably alive, but crowded and 
instinct at every point with life, absorbed with interest, 
aglow with enthusiasm, and nothing in the compass of 
human attainments would be so commanding over the 
inclinations of young men. Possibly some, whom other 
callings tempt by a louder promise of wealth or reputa- 
tion, might be found willing to forego fame and luxury, 
for the sake of contributing their share to the sanctifica- 
tion of the coming age. Let the nucleus formed be in 
Christian earnest, — be full of living, burning heat ; and, 
like the molten jet of volcanic lava we sometimes see 
shooting up through the inert strata of rock and soil 
about it, it would fuse all the surrounding mass into a 
state homogeneous with its own. 

So of the want of sympathy complained of in the pro- 
fession. How can sympathy exist where there is no 
consentaneous spiritual life ? What is sympathy, in- 
deed, except that, — aw iraQos, — a feeling together ? A 
lifeless sympathy is a contradiction in terms. Fellow- 
feeling in death, — harmony between corpses, — is an 
absurdity. Bring in vitality of purpose, and vitality of 
action, and you break down all barriers of suspicion. 



460 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



Raise the head-waters of spiritual life, and all the sep- 
arate fountains become so full and leaping in their mo- 
tion, that they gush spontaneously over, and mingle 
together. When the new life is begotten, even the 
tongue of dumbness becomes vocal, — like the healed 
man's in Decapolis. 

III. But it is time to turn, and contemplate the living 
Church, — the whole body of Christian disciples, minis- 
tered to by this living ministry, nourished by a vital 
communion with Christ the Source, and putting forth 
the energy of its inner life, in a practical piety on the 
one hand, and a spiritual righteousness on the other. 

See how such a state of the Church would furnish the 
best possible safeguard against the evils that, in these 
times, most threaten its purity and its peace. One of 
these is dogmatism. Once possess a man, no matter 
whether he is a Puritan or a Bishop, a Quaker or a Car- 
dinal, with a quickened and renewed spiritual life, and 
to him dogmatism becomes impossible. He may be a 
controversialist or an enthusiast, but never an acrimo- 
nious dogmatist. A principle animates him, which, just 
so far as it actuates him, saves him from that particular 
sin. It marks the distinction between that cordial at- 
tachment to believed doctrine which is commendable, 
and that complacent assumption of infallibility in the 
creed which is condemnable. It gives him a touchstone, 
by which he instinctively shrinks from bigotry, as from a 
partnership in disgrace, and arms him against being vic- 
timized by the idol-speculations of his own brain. What- 
ever names the boasting sects may chronicle in then 
calendars of saints, none that deserved canonization ever 
lived who worshipped the abstractions of dogma more 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



461 



than the Lord of life. It is with denominations as with 
persons: in proportion as they are quick with spiritual 
purpose, they are free from the shame of dogmatism. 

Another danger is formalism. Formalism crept into 
the Church from two sources, Judaism and Paganism, — 
one of which completely wrapped up and hid its life in 
ceremony, till it suffered consumption ; and the other 
had not life enough under its ritual to keep its pomp and 
pageantry even outwardly decent. Once in, formalism 
found material enough to foster it in human indolence 
and human pride ; and so it kept on growing by the 
help of every idle Christian's sluggishness, and every bad 
system's misleading, and every ecclesiastical despot's 
ambition, till finally it swelled into the vast, stately, hol- 
low, tinselled, and draperied fabric of the Popedom. 
When religious forms have first been devised, a certain 
freshness of conviction has gone into them, that has 
made them vital. But presently the life has refused to 
stand and stagnate in these cisterns, and so ebbed away 
and sought out new channels. The mistake has been, 
that the forms have insisted on standing, after the life 
within was gone ; and accordingly their figure has been 
that of wooden vessels shrunk and dried in the sun. It 
was so with the forms of the Romish Church, of the 
Church of Henry the Eighth and the Bishops, of Presby- 
terianism and of Quakerism, for the Quaker is in his 
way a formalist. But indolence and pride are as much 
opposed by spiritual life now, as the Judaism and Hea- 
thenism of eighteen hundred years ago. Where there is 
that life, how can ceremonies be put before virtues, — the 
husk and shell before the kernel and substance, — broad 
phylacteries for a generous character, — religious usages 
as substitutes for righteousness and faith, — mint, anise, 

39* 



462 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



and cumin, for self-sacrifice, charity, and truth? In a 
consecration to the substance of piety ; in a nearer fel- 
lowship with Jesus, and a more palpable and inwrought 
experience of his regenerating and transforming truth,— 
in this, and this only, shall the Church, or any of its so- 
cieties, find escape from formalism. Form is body. A 
living doctrine never need advertise for a body, nor go 
carefully about to invent one, any more than a young 
oak needs to advertise for a trunk and branches. God 
giveth it a body as it hath pleased him. Get the faith, 
and it will shape a form of its own. Have a heart full 
of prayer ; or else a liturgy, a gradation of priestly offices, 
postures, wax-candles burning in the day-time, bowing 
to the east, priestly manipulations, will never so con- 
ciliate the Holy Ghost as to matriculate you in the arms 
of the holy Jerusalem which is above and free, the 
mother of us all. 

Another embarrassment to the modern Church is in 
the suspicion, if not the open enmity, of those companies 
of men associated for the special reform of specific social 
abuses, whose young ardor for the favorite cause makes 
the Church seem lumbering and superannuated. Is it 
not clear that the Church will best discharge herself of 
blame, reconcile her sometimes unfilial child, Philan- 
thropy, to her bosom, escape all compromise of dignity, 
and at the same time be realizing her own destiny, by 
addressing herself to the most earnest unfolding of the 
divine life within her, out of which all humanities must 
be supplied, and becoming altogether alive with Christ ? 

Another bad tendency is to partisanship. Malicious 
as the temper of religious parties and partisans is, direct 
efforts to allay it will always be less effective than that 
consecrated fervor in the life of godliness, which crowds 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 463 

it out of breath, and grows over it. It is hardly to be 
supposed, that an Antichrist that has lodged under the 
shelter of the nominal fold so many centuries can be 
eliminated by a single struggle. He is too hospitably 
entertained, and too assiduously courted, even by those 
that in their better moments venture to hint that he is 
unwelcome, to make such hints effective. The Church 
has never enjoyed an entire exemption from civil war. 
The moment men agreeing in theology have been de- 
nominated, as if their name had wrought a malignant 
spell up»n them, they have begun to commit denomina- 
tional sin. Sectarian ambition springs up ; sectarian 
pride sets in ; sectarian animosity is engendered ; secta- 
rian ofnciousness goes out capturing proselytes; secta- 
rian jealousy rankles; and finally, with all its fury, wrath, 
and strategy, its bloodhound passions, and its musketry 
of accusation, and its small arms of malignant slander, 
open sectarian battle rages. Christendom slips back 
into practical Paganism, while Christians sit picking 
motes out of one another's eyes. One would think an 
intelligent reading of experience would show, that, if any 
other possible agency than a higher tone of spiritual life 
were to accomplish unity or concord, it would have been 
attained before this. That is the only experiment that 
has not been fairly and fully tried. When it is tried 
fairly and fully, it will solve the difficulty that theology 
has been spending ingenious abstractions upon ever 
since the days of Constantine. Ecclesiastical councils 
will drop into matters of history. Trent, and Dort, and 
Nice will be only landmarks of a completed pilgrimage 
across a desert, — the grass-covered battle-fields of a 
finished crusade, — ending, not in a holy sepulchre, but 
in a holy life. Tests and bulls of excommunication will 



464 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



be respectfully hung up with other antiquarian relics, 
and it will be seen and felt that a Church is nothing less 
than a vital body of cordial believers in Christ, partakers 
of his spirit, and workers for his truth. A faith so quick 
and ample will one day realize the wondrous reconcilia- 
tions of the Prophet's vision in the holy mountain, — 
where the lion lies down with the lamb, and none hurt 
nor destroy ; it will lay Calvin's hand in Channing's, — 
put the band of one magic name, even the common 
Master's, round the lives of the philanthropic Clarkson 
and the mystical devotees of Port Royal, — draw a Prot- 
estant veneration to the Catholic Fenelon, — and canon- 
ize the practical, road-building Oberlin of Waldbach into 
companionship with the quietistic saints of the Romish 
Calendar. 

Thus we come, finally, in our subject, — as God grant 
we may come veritably and visibly in the age that he is 
preparing, — to the Living Church. It is a body, whose 
life, in all the possible strictness and signification of the 
word, is the life of Christ in the soul. Of the accom- 
plishments, the amenities, the graces of intellect that 
adorn our worldly relations, modern civilization leaves 
no deficiency. What we most deeply and pressingly 
need is the life of religious sensibility, — the faith that 
leans on God, the hope that reaches up to immortality, 
the love that seizes things invisible. This we need, su- 
peradded to our civilization, — our educational and com- 
mercial privileges, — or rather, laid as the basis of them. 
Life itself, the true or inward life, is overlaid and crushed 
by the mere appendages of living. Buying and selling, 
getting gain and getting knowledge, are made to limit the 
energies of our immortality, and dwarf God's image in 
us. Science as well as traffic, literature and the schools 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



465 



as well as business, wait for the ennobling influence of 
faith, the purifying breath of devotion, the sanctification 
of prayer. I have heard of an honest clergyman, a 
preacher to sailors, in one of the floating Bethels that 
are seen at some of our Eastern seaports, whose contro- 
versial reading hardly kept pace with his zeal, and who 
was asked one day, whether his chapel' was " high 
church " or " low church." Supposing, in his simplici- 
ty, that the question referred to the position of his Beth- 
el, he answered, that it depended entirely on the tide ! 
Now, fashionable worldliness is the tide that graduates 
the standing of too many of our churches ; and the 
higher it keeps their taxes and social reputation, the 
lower it keeps the tone of their piety. 

Never so accommodate religion, gentlemen, in your 
preaching, to the fraudulent practices of the business 
world, that you will fall into the same class with the 
Gypsy mother mentioned by Borrow the traveller, who 
said to her children in the morning, " Now, children, say 
your prayers ; and then go, steal your breakfast." 

Spiritual indolence is, in these times, the worst enemy 
the Church has to encounter. It is not that men openly 
reject and make war upon her, but that they drowsily 
sleep around her altar. It is that men are content with 
such paltry satisfactions and tinsel comforts as the senses 
can bribe them with, heedless of the inward instincts that 
claim communion with the skies. It is that eternity has 
no awfulness to them, life no depth of meaning, enjoy- 
ment no obligations, bereavement no solemnity, suffering 
and sorrow no prophetic suggestions of an hereafter, the 
soul no aspirations, conscience no echo of God, Christ no 
enrapturing beauty in his holiness, the resurrection no 
pledge of heaven. It is that men can stretch themselves 



466 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



on their couches of ease, and slumber, amidst the sublim- 
est mysteries and most stirring revelations of Providence. 
What we need, then, to bring back the Church to her 
life, is to awake and arise ; to hearken and watch ; to wait 
on the Holy Spirit ; to snatch the film from our eyeballs ; 
to lift our waiting souls to God, like flowers parched with 
drought to the rain ; to breathe in his blessed life ; to be 
regenerated and consecrated by his inspiration of love, 
communicated through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

There is a life that is fitful and spasmodic, lively in the 
conference and enthusiastic at a revival, but which falls 
into a dreary eclipse at the merchant's desk, or the lob- 
bies of a State-house, or the political caucus, or the round 
of a housekeeper's vexations. But the life of a Christ- 
like soul is as steadfast as it is earnest, as firm in the 
scoffs of the judgment-hall, or under the crown of thorns, 
as in the meditations of Mount Olivet and the solemn 
stillness of the temple. It stands with as serene a fore- 
head before the scorn of fashion, as before the flatteries 
of partisans. It lifts itself with as majestic port against 
the sly seductions of Fortune, when she bids a higher and 
higher price for the soul, as when the way is safe, and all 
perils are swept out of its path. Where the Church 
lives, — where it holds its Master's spirit and truth, not 
as the mortuary of a deceased and buried benefactor, but 
as the inbreathing of a present inspiration, — it will never 
suffer its members to sit idly with folded hands, looking 
lazily out on the white fields of harvest, where no reap- 
er's sickle rings against the wheat; but it will send them 
forth to work, nerved with an impulse that no disap- 
pointment can palsy, no misgivings keep back. You 
may burn temples ; you may pulverize rituals ; you may 
absorb creeds ; you may strangle missionaries ; but the 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



467 



eternally reproductive energy of such a Church as that 
lives on. 

If the Church will go forth, then, to win new victories, 
she needs only to take fearlessly up the supremacy with 
which her God has dowered her, namely, the reconciling 
life of her indwelling Lord. Shutting up all internal 
questions that make her militant against herself, she is 
to move on in her own absolute, sublime majesty, mili- 
tant only against every form of sin, to enthrone the king- 
dom of God. She must cease to beg favors of worldly 
policy. She must stop her infamous coquetry with 
Mammon. She must not be bowing on Sundays to sec- 
tarian prejudice, nor on week-days to social respecta- 
bility, nor ever whisper guilty flatteries to popular sins, 
nor wait till great public vices are manifestly dying out 
of themselves, and feeble with approaching dissolution, 
before she dares strike at them. The stanch, uncom- 
promising sincerity of old Puritans and Confessors must 
be in her muscles. An awful zeal must gird up her 
loins. Purity, freedom, equity, are to be more to her 
than costly churches ; the prayers of saintly men and 
women, and children too, her patronage ; and her daily 
speech, the benediction of charity. She must hold forth, 
through her ministers, the word of life ; to wit, that God 
is in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. 

You, my brothers, members of the Graduating Class, 
are henceforth permitted the unrivalled privilege of en- 
tering into these grand enterprises of amelioration, fur- 
nished by wise instruction for your lofty office. 

I bid you move into your sacred calling with such joy- 
ous hopes as the Puritan army had, who marched to the 
fight at Naseby chanting praise. Go, charged with some- 
thing of the brave temper of that devoted missionary, 



468 



THE WORD OF LIFE. 



Gordon Hall, so ardent to reach the heathen with his 
message, that he offered to work his passage to the field ; 
with the faith of those valiant discoverers that burnt their 
boats behind them when they touched the shore; with 
the self-scrutiny of Paul, who agonized, lest, having 
preached to others, though woe was on him if he 
preached not, he himself might be cast away. With- 
out these, all the machinery of Funds and Theological 
Schools will be like expecting to make sand deserts 
fruitful by drainage. 

See that no needed reforms are unchurched, because 
the Church would not nurture them, through your life- 
lessness or cowardice. Be independent, and not mere 
movable articles of church furniture. Scorn all meas- 
ures of self-promotion, and renounce ambition before you 
cross this threshold to-night. 

Lean only on the Spirit of Infinite Pity and Help. 
Keep the simplicity of childlike trust. Never measure 
your fidelity by the poor signals of man's applause. Be 
willing to share your Master's glory, made perfect through 
suffering. Nowhere be ashamed of the Gospel of Re- 
demption. Be sure your real success, in the last awards, 
will be found in the exact measure of the fervor and con- 
stancy of your communion with your Lord. Let it be 
enough if his strength is manifest through your weak- 
ness. Hold forth " the word of life." Preach " God in 
Christ, reconciling the world unto himself." And 

" May the hour 
Soon come, when, all false gods, false creeds, false prophets 
Demolished, the round world shall be at last 
The mercy-seat of God, the heritage 
Of Christ, and the possession of the Spirit ! " 

THE END. 



LIBRARY OF 





